Accidental Providence
by Araceil
Summary: Accidents happen, and sometimes by design. Naruto was determined to become a Genin, it was just his luck that this year they were being tested in the Kawarimi instead of the Bunshin due to a single lazy Admin-chuunin. Team Gai!Naruto, Maito!Lee (adoption yay), BAMF!everyone. (Confirmed Neji/Naru, facebook repost)
1. Chapter 1

Accidents happen, and sometimes by design. Naruto was determined to become a Genin, it was just his luck that this year they were being tested in the Kawarimi instead of the Bunshin due to a single lazy Admin-chuunin. Team Gai!Naruto, Maito!Lee (adoption yay), BAMF!everyone.

 _Pairings are up in the air at the moment, I'm torn between making this completely Gen with only background pairings, or having it a Neji/Naruto (after a fuck ton of character development)._

 _ **000**_

 **Chapter One**

In Konoha, the Academy Graduation was every six months, once in the spring of April, the other in the middle of November. A student could apply for early graduation whenever they wanted to, with or without their sensei's recommendation; them, or their parents. However, if the student that applied for early graduation _failed_ , they would have to skip the next rotation before they could apply again, thus forcing the applicant to study for another _year_ to train themselves to an acceptable standard.

Amongst the Academy Chuunin, it was known that a certain Orange Pain in the Ass could not perform the Bunshin no Jutsu to save his life.

Thus, more underhanded Chuunin that stood against the Boy in question had arranged for the Ninjutsu segment to rotate its exams for every six month graduation, _coincidentally_ , completely by happenstance _really_ , so that the Bunshin would _always_ be on the roster for the exact time when the Boy would be able to apply again. They claimed it was so the children that failed couldn't inform their peers on what to study, but that was merely a pleasant side effect.

In one reality, it would continue this way for years.

It would take the reveal of a Traitor amidst their ranks for the Boy to graduate. Foiling the long-term plan to force said boy into Ageing Out of the Academy, thus losing any _legitimate_ chance of becoming a Ninja outside some rather more... shadowy basements. Not that any but the two instigators knew, the tattoos on their tongues itching faintly with the reminder of their duty as they watched over the child that reminded them how to feel, and could do nothing but sabotage him at every turn as was their Duty to the Great Leaf.

In another, it would take the untimely recall of one such instigator to home base, and the replacement, a rather uninspired Chuunin that had been working the Mission Desk on and off for the last eight months, taking one look at the tests and deciding to swap out the Ninjutsu section in the hopes of sabotaging the Boy. This would be the second time he took the exams, so surely he would have studied for the Jutsus he knew were coming, the Bunshin and the Henge. Deciding that Bunshin would be too easy a Ninjutsu, the Chuunin surreptitiously erased it with a thick blot of ink, and replaced it with the Kawarimi no Jutsu. Smug and satisfied, he made sure that no one would change it back by 'losing' it amidst his papers until it was time for the actual exams – when it would be too late to amend what they were testing.

It would backfire, horribly, and begin a legacy that no one could have foreseen.

One that _only_ Uzumaki Naruto could have left.

 _ **000**_

Sai-sensei wasn't in today, Naruto noted as he waited in place, legs jogging up and down beneath his desk. Instead some no name Chuunin from the admin office was overseeing the Ninjutsu exams. That sucked. Sai-sensei was stuffy and seemed like a robot until Naruto got him pissed, but he was at least neutral grounds, and Naruto could trust that he wouldn't get a raw deal on the exam. He had been on tenderhooks the whole day, he was _fairly_ certain he'd passed everything so far this time over. Last year it had been both his Ninjutsu and his Taijutsu that lost him the graduation, Bunshin yet again proving to be his Hell Viewing, and Taijutsu because Mizuki clipped him around the head with a kick that put him on his ass with a concussion for the rest of the exams. This year he had Iruka-sensei as his Taijutsu examiner, and he was _way_ easier to deal with than Mizuki, he totally kicked his ass! (Which was weird now that he thought about it because Naruto could have sworn he'd overheard Suzume-sensei, who was in charge of the Kunoichi lessons, commenting on how Iruka-sensei was better than Mizuki at Taijutsu and, well, pretty much all of the ninja arts several weeks ago, and Iruka-sensei humbly saying that Mizuki was just out of practice while Iruka trained fairly regularly with colleagues from the Mission Desk when they were finished with their shift).

Ninjutsu still had every chance of burying his ass for another year of mind-numbing boring crap that no one actually cared about, though.

If he failed even _one_ of the three core examinations, Ninjutsu, Taijutsu, or Tactics, then that was that, game over, try again next year. The exams worked on a point system: Passing Nin, Tai, and Tactics would net you thirty points each, the better you did the more points you earned, so say if you failed Ninjutsu, if you totally dominated in Tai and Tactics earning the maximum fifty points, you could still graduate as the minimum point requirement was ninety.

Naruto liked to _think_ he could have done it, but decided to try all three because he was a badass, but he wasn't so unaware of his own strengths and weaknesses that he actually believed it. He knew he wasn't skilled enough to bomb one test and make up for it on the others. He _needed_ to scrape a pass in all three to make it.

Ninjutsu was all he had left. He'd been practising for _months_ on this. His henge was flawless, able to fool even the ANBU members sent to chase him down after his pranks (he missed the Military Police, they were so much more fun to play Chase with). His rope escape techniques were also flawless (ANBU had given him a lot of practice), as was his rope capture and wire manipulation techniques (he'd gotten good at pranks on the move, Falcon-kun wasn't so appreciative, and Naruto didn't think he was ever going to live his Spider Wire technique down). He still couldn't _aim_ his Kawarimi so good, but he'd managed to figure out how to lessen the distance he jumped to just outside the village gates instead of to Tanzaku Gai (best day EVER), unfortunately the Academy Sensei's never believed him when he said he could Substitute that far, and it had gotten to the point where the next person that told him to use the technique was going to be handed a signed letter from the Gate Chuunin to _prove_ that Naruto had done it.

The classroom was completely silent as the bland Admin Chuunin observed them, his hands clasped behind his back, stood at ease in front of them.

"For your final Ninjutsu exam, you will be required to successfully perform two Ninjutsu, the Henge technique, and the Kawarimi technique. Wait here until your name is called, and the come next door," he announced loudly through the lecture hall, not even twitching as the tension ramped up throughout the room.

For Naruto, it felt like someone had pulled his spine out.

He flopped over his desk in sheer _relief_.

He had this. He _had_ this!

It was in the bag! That Hitai-ate was _his!_

Waiting was _agony_. Now that he knew, now that he was _guaranteed_ a pass, he couldn't sit still. He wriggled, fidgeted, legs bounced, fingers tapped. He could tell he was driving the other examinees crazy, the tension ramping up further throughout the room. One kunoichi with twin buns was bouncing kunai between her fingers, limbering them up ready, one boy with muttering to himself, arms wrapped around his shoulders as he rolled his shoulders, a few short sharp scuffles had broken out between some more hot-headed boys in the back row that had the Chuunin administrator watching them break up with judicious use of chalk-sticks used like shuriken. The only patch of calm within the room was a Hyuuga boy in white wearing a black headband surrounded by girls. It was a scene reminiscent of Naruto's class and Sasuke, but this time the girls were too nervous to squeal and flutter around the object of their esteem. Kinda made him dislike the Hyuuga boy automatically.

One by one they got called in. They didn't come back. Naruto assumed they got escorted into another room, or allowed to leave where their parents would be waiting outside to congratulate them.

Only, no one would be waiting to congratulate Naruto when he walked out of here with his shiny headband. For a moment, the thought stole the breath from his lungs before he shook his head and slapped his cheeks, the sound drawing glances from his classmates that was just as quickly dismissed as pre-exam nerves. He didn't need to show it off to anyone. He'd show it off to himself! Because he earned it!

"Uzumaki Naruto!"

Show time.

 _ **000**_

He thought he would have been screaming, jumping for joy, but instead, he stared down at the headband clenched tightly between his fingers in wordless ecstatic _glee_. Unable to even speak through his happiness as he wondered through the streets of Konoha in an utter daze.

Because his name started with Uzu, his name had been the last in the class to be called. By that time, there were only a handful of hitai-ate left, all of them red.

It was going to clash with his orange jumpsuit, he realised, completely inanely.

And laughed, breathlessly, then semi-hysterically. He ended up having to stop, and lean against a near-by wall, arms curled around his stomach, clutching his hitai-ate to his chest as he laughed until his stomach hurt, and his eyes streamed with tears of happiness.

He was a Ninja. He'd made it. Entirely on his own merit, no special exceptions!

He made it.

And no one could take that away from him.

It had taken some arguing, the Chuunin hadn't believed him when he said he swapped to the Guard House, but he did it again, and this time popped back with the promised letter from both Kotetsu and Izumo to prove it. Turned out he broke an Academy record for the furthest Kawarimi on record with that one. Eat that Uchiha Sasuke! Who was the better ninja _now_ huh? Huh? Well it had to be the one with the headband! You couldn't _be_ a ninja _without_ a headband! Hah!

He had the rest of the day, and tomorrow to get his Ninja I.D. sorted, and the third day... he would meet his Team and his Jounin sensei. He was looking forward to that the most. A lot of Ninja said your team was like your family, that sometimes they were _closer_ than family because they were the people you bled with, fought with; you trained, sweated, and cried with; that you went through hell with. He wanted that. He _wanted_ that family, a family that would love him and have his back, that wouldn't _look_ at him with that cold dismissive scorn.

But... what would he do if they did?

What would he do if his _Sensei_ did?

The bubble of happiness in his gut began to go sour with anxiousness. And all of a sudden, he felt a little sick.

He – he would just have to – have to – _win_ them over, yeah!

Prove to them that Uzumaki Naruto was going to be the Hokage, that he was worthy of love and respect! That he was awesome and badass and – and – and they were _lucky_ to be on his team and that maybe, just maybe, he would _share_ some of that awesome... with them...

His thoughts trailed off, and the sick feeling in his stomach grew until his chest hurt, and his mouth tasted kinda metallic-y and sour.

Tasted like a lie.

What would he do... if they hated him like everyone else...?

Slowly, his legs gave out on him, sending him sliding to the ground where he sat with his back to the wall and stared up at the sliver of blue sky overhead, the over hanging wires, tree branches, and the distant sound of the village as his white noise. As a rule, he didn't like to brood. It was only too easy for his mind to go to dark places, for his temper to turn cold, for his blood to burn even as a lump of ice sat heavy and _hard_ in his chest. As a rule, he didn't like thinking about things too much. It was too dangerous.

For other people.

So he slapped his cheeks, and banged his head back against the wall behind him and jumped to his feet with a righteous huff – he had stuff to do today! He was a Ninja now! Which meant he needed to sort his shit out like a grown up! Because that was what he was! His headband was proof of his becoming an adult – so now he had to act like it!

First up, he needed to amend his paperwork with his landlord. He also needed to change his papers at the housing office so they'd know he was now signed on with the Shinobi forces, he also needed to inform the bursary that he would be doing missions and he couldn't claim money anymore (they came down _hard_ on genin who tried to claim bursary when they were active ninja – that money was for people who weren't able to support themselves, not people who wanted extra spending money).

He needed to clean his flat too. It was trash day tomorrow. So he'd do that once he'd finished his paperwork, and then he'd have to clean his clothes ready for tomorrow when he had to take his picture for his Ninja I.D. - actually, why shouldn't he do that today? He was heading to the building next to the Hokage's office _anyway_ , he could do it while he was there and kill two birds with one stone, and spend tomorrow shopping for new kunai and shuriken. With a genin hitai-ate he would be able to buy live steel. Almost all the Academy kunai and shuriken were blunted to prevent them from hurting themselves, they had to wait before they would buy their own sharpened sets even though their throwing practice was with razor sharp blades, and they were taught how to sharpen and maintain their equipment.

That sounded like a plan he could get behind!

Pleased with himself, Naruto took a breath, and put his hitai-ate on. Pressing it against his forehead, tucking the cloth tails behind his ears, and tying it tight at the base of his skull.

It was heavier than his goggles.

The weight of responsibility to his village.

He should have known nothing good could ever remain just _good_ for him. Nothing in his life couldn't be tainted. Even this, even today, becoming a genin, taking the first steps on his path to becoming Hokage could be _ruined_.

He'd just finished filling in his papers at the housing office, handing them over to the scowling administrative genin who combed through them carefully before filing them and telling him to get out. As of next month he would no longer receive money from the Village Bursary, a fund set up specifically to support orphans, war veterans, the widows and family of fallen shinobi/kunoichi, and ninja that were on leave for medical reasons. They weren't expected to pay that money back as every single ninja had that money automatically deducted from their mission pay before they even accepted said mission – it was all carefully calculated. Roughly fifteen percent of all mission pay went into that fund. The reason that bounties were so attractive to active ninja was that often times they would receive only twenty-five percent of the overall mission's pay out depending on the rank, the higher the rank, the higher percentage of pay they would receive. Not that Naruto actually knew or understood the ins and outs of how the village was run, yet. Right now all he knew was that he needed to take a look at mission rank pay and work out how many of each he would need to do a week in order to afford the rent on his flat.

It was as he was crossing the playground outside the Academy, aiming for the mission office stairwell that would take him upstairs to get the information he needed, and get his photo taken for his Ninja I.D. on the roof that the first person commented on his passing the exam.

"What the hell do you think you're wearing, Deadlast?!" Haruno Sakura shouted furiously from one side where she and the rest of the kunoichi from his old class were loitering and sighing dreamily over Uchiha Sasuke.

Naruto _lit up_ when he saw her. "Sakura-chan! Look, look! I passed!" he exclaimed gleefully bounding over, thumb pointing at his headband sat oh-so-shiny on his forehead.

"Don't lie!" Yamanaka Ino snapped, scowling ferociously, "There's no _way_ you could have passed Naruto!"

"Yeah! You're bottom of the class!" Sakura chimed in viciously, "You're going to get in _so_ much trouble!" she exclaimed.

"No! No! I really passed!" Naruto rushed to explain, hands lifted, "See, I'm super bad at Bunshin, but this turn over they changed it up – they used Kawarimi, and I'm super good, I actually broke a distance record! I passed!"

"You are _such_ a liar!" Ino shouted, "How dare you run around with that headband on! Get it off! Where did you steal it from?"

"I didn't steal it!" Naruto flared, hurt and anger making his skin flush. "They gave it to me!"

"Then give it back, idiot!" Sakura barked, "It isn't yours and you'll get in trouble if anyone catches you with it!"

Ino made a sound of disgust as Naruto shook his head, and faster than anyone could stop her, her arm snapped out, fingers clawed around his hitai-ate and _pulled_.

Naruto's hand jack-knifed into her neck, his other snapped up, twisting around her wrist to grab his headband, even as his leg swept around, kicking her feet out from under her.

It was only the grip he had on the front of her top that stopped her from sprawling in the dirt as he roughly yanked his headband out of her grasp and then _dropped_ her as she gagged around her bruised neck.

"It's mine! I passed!" he snarled before turning on heel and sprinting into the stairwell, sick to his stomach, and shaking all over, leaving his classmates to clamour around the Yamanaka heiress as she wheezed and coughed. He shuddered as he rounded the corner and gripped his headband hard enough for his fingers to _ache_.

How dare she?

How _dare_ she try to take – he _told_ her he passed! Why didn't she – why didn't _anyone_ believe him?

Snarling to himself he stormed up to the roof where the photographer was seeing to ninja registrations, he tied his headband and sat on the chair, glaring into the camera. He would show them.

 _ **000**_

The next morning was brighter, and thankfully better than the one before.

With the Academy still in session, Naruto didn't have to deal with his former classmates anymore, didn't have to see Ino or Sakura-chan and put up with them screaming at him. He cleaned his flat like a man possessed, still angry by what happened the previous day. He would have felt guilty about disturbing the Admin Chuunin that was inducting his interview for his I.D., but it was one of those assholes that glared at him, so he didn't feel _too_ bad about making him pale by degrees the longer the interview went. Today he had to submit it to Jiji, but he would do that after he got his new weapons.

(Maybe glaring at the man like he was plotting on how to tar and feather him when he mentioned how much he liked traps and _didn't_ like people that glared at him for no reason was too much. (Naruto had no idea he looked like he was contemplating disembowling the man with his own writing utensils))

Either way, _weapons_!

With Gama-chan nice and chubby, Naruto made his way to old man Isamu's weapon shop. He was pretty much the only blacksmith in the area that gave him a decent deal, got him 'special' items at discounted prices from out the back. Naruto nearly took Iruka-sensei's foot off with the last kunai set the guy gave him, Iruka screeched about how off balance they were, but Isamu said they had seals in there that used complex fuuton manipulation that guided them straight at people. Naruto had tested it out and everything! It always curved towards someone whenever he threw it at a target – one time it nearly killed a poor kitty and a group of genin all shouted at him for animal abuse.

Naruto wanted another set of those! Especially if he was going to be going on active missions now!

He was lucky this time, last time Isamu didn't have any in stock, _this_ time he had a whole ten kunai and thirty shuriken that he'd kept hold of _just for Naruto himself_!

Isamu was the best!

Hokage Jiji though...

He stared at Naruto's I.D. for a long time, something complicated on his face, before he looked up and lifted an eyebrow, "It seems you were upset yesterday. Is there anything you would like to tell me, Naruto-kun?" he asked gently, ignoring the short glance from the Chuunin beside him who quickly busied himself with a bunch of papers instead of comment.

He wrinkled his nose, "Eh, no one believed me when I said I graduated. But I'll show 'em! Uzumaki Naruto is gunna be Hokage, Dattebayo! You just keep my hat warm for me, I'll be taking it any day now!" he exclaimed boisterously.

The louder you were, the less people looked.

Hokage Jiji was the only exception as he stared for a long time and blinked slowly. Naruto wasn't fooling him much, but he let it go all the same. Like always.

"I see. Your papers are in order, and your Identification is acceptable. Be back here tomorrow at nine o'clock for your graduation ceremony and team assignments," Sarutobi explained, taking a sheet of paper from the Chuunin next to him, writing something on the bottom, and handing it over.

Naruto beamed and quickly snatched it up – scrawled in the bottom corner was a time and the words 'Ichiraku Ramen'.

 _ **000**_

" _Today I stand before you, not only as your Hokage, but as an old man who is very proud of you. One who knows the future of this great village is secure in the next generation._

" _I look upon you, the new leaves of this great tree, and I see the Will of Fire burning bright within your eyes. A flame to warm our home, and burn all who would seek to do it harm, and I am assured that I place our future into the best hands to see it flourish and grow to even greater heights than before._

" _Congratulations Genin, and welcome to the ranks of the Konohagakure no Sato military forces."_

 _ **000**_

Naruto didn't know a single person within the classroom he had been assigned to after the ceremony that morning. Jiji had given them all some flowery speech about the future, trees, fire, and duty – Naruto kind of tuned most of it out in all honesty. The old geezer could _really_ talk for an age and a half.

He recognised several of them from when he _took_ the exams. The girl with buns, the annoying calm boy, the really nervous one with the braid, the two boys on the backrow that nearly got thrown out for choking each other before they got called in, and one or two other people who had some rather... _distinctive_ tastes in fashion.

Taking a deep breath and shaking his hands out, Naruto made his way to one of the empty seats and got comfortable. He'd heard that they went through the lists in number order, and with nearly thirty to forty students in a class, it would be about ten to thirteen teams to be announced and collected. He might be here for a while. He wondered what kind of team he would end up on. Iruka-sensei pegged him as a trap-ninjutsu specialist, so he was genuinely curious. Would he end up on a scout-recon team? Combat first response?

The door banged open and a Chuunin Naruto had never seen before marched in, his wide face had narrow eyes and dark hair hidden under a black bandanna with the leaf symbol on his forehead. He slammed a hand down on the desk and grinned challengingly at them all.

"Welcome to the first day of the rest of your lives! Today I'm putting your sorry asses into teams of three so listen up! When I call your name, you park your asses where you are and wait for your Jounin sensei to come and pick you up!" he barked enthusiastically at them all, several of the genin unconsciously straightening up in their seats under his stare. The man nodded shortly in satisfaction before straightening up and producing a clipboard from – somewhere, and beginning to read names off.

"Team One! Akamatsu Ken, Kishimoto Masashi, Oda Eiichiro!

"Team Two! Kawahara Reki, Yamada Koutarou, Rock Lee!

"Team Three! Hyuga Neji, Mitsutoshi Tenten, Uzumaki Naruto!"

Naruto immediately tuned out the rest of the introductions as he looked around the room for his new teammates, the bun headed girl waved cheerfully at him and mouthed 'I'm Tenten, nice to meet you' from her seat. Naruto felt hope swell in his chest and _beamed_ at her, 'nice to meet you too, I'm Naruto' he returned. If it were possible to shout while mouthing to someone, that would have been the general impression he gave. Thankfully, instead of getting annoyed with his enthusiasm like the girls in his class would have, Tenten just grinned at him and pointed back to the sensei as he continued listing names and turned her attention away.

Naruto was practically dancing in his seat, he had one super awesome teammate already! He wondered who Hyuuga Neji was... Must have been a guy judging by the name. Same clan as the quiet girl in his class, Hinata, so that meant pale skin, dark hair, and white eyes – oh no.

His heart sank as his eyes landed on the only individual in the class that description actually matched.

The quiet popular guy he was pretty sure he already didn't like.

Well, maybe he was being quick to judge, maybe. He could be quite nice, Naruto didn't know a damn thing about him, and hadn't _he_ been judged by everyone around him for some reason and hated for it when he was, in fact, actually very awesome? He should be fair and judge his teammate on his own merit, instead of how everyone around him behaved. Tenten was awesome, maybe he would get _super_ lucky and have _two_ awesome teammates. Maybe.

(He made a mental note to brace himself all the same.)

"Alright, that's all of you in teams and _**shut the hell up you can't change them I don't care if you don't like each other deal with it**_!" the Sensei roared across the room before any of his students could open their mouths to object. Naruto heard the sound of multiple teeth clacking back together behind him as mouths were hastily shut. "Now, I'll introduce your Jounin instructors after lunch so until the- "

The door exploded open in a green blur.

" _ **DYNAMIC ENTRY!**_ "

 _ **0000**_

 **Chapter one FINISHED. Had to end it with Gai, there was literally no other way.**

 **Okay, important note for the fic:**

The way Kishimoto treated Naruto in the series was absolutely criminal. He literally dumbed the kid down so far he may as well have never either lived in Konoha or been to the Academy. It works to give maximum world-building exposition where the other characters now have a _reason_ to explain the world to him, but it also ruins the character world-building because it makes the integral piece, Naruto himself, completely divorced from everything around him.

 _Also, as a flat out, I have never watched the anime. So don't expect filler relevant stuff here. If it wasn't in the book, I don't class it as canon. Deal with it._

So, I'll be rewriting Naruto's character to no longer exist within the vacuum that Kishimoto created solely for exposition. He'll be involved. He will know things about people, places, procedures, etc. Not only that, but he's a young boy, the village pariah, who has been living alone since childhood. Boy knows how to take care of himself, he has twisted social awareness, things that may be normal are astounding to him, things that are astounding to others are normal to him. Just bare with me on this. I promise I'm not just throwing shit at the walls to see what sticks, I've got stuff _already_ foreshadowed for later on and – yeah.

 **Hope you guys enjoy the rest of the fic, there will be slash, Tenten is aro/ace and awesome just the way she is – so don't expect pairings with her. I don't intend to bash anyone, but bear in mind they're all young and dumb, they will grow. So while I apologise now, I will straight up say nothing here is meant as a bash.**


	2. Chapter 2

Accidents happen, and sometimes by design. Naruto was determined to become a Genin, it was just his luck that this year they were being tested in the Kawarimi instead of the Bunshin due to a single lazy Admin-chuunin. Team Gai!Naruto, Maito!Lee (adoption yay), BAMF!everyone.

 _ **000**_

 **Chapter Two**

The Chuunin was crushed under the door and sent flying out of the opposite window.

The room exploded into screaming and shouts of horror, alarm, and fear with the various fresh Genin scrambling backwards in chaos. Naruto was already halfway across the room – lunging towards the green _giant_ that just blasted the Chuunin away, he was aware of three others along side him, Neji, the nervous boy from the Ninjutsu exam with the braid, and a random boy from the row behind him – light flashed in the corner of his eye and the kunai that Tenten had been playing with whizzed past his ear.

Two, three, four, five – six kunai whipped through the air ahead of them and were _brushed aside_ – oh this was going to hurt -

The green blur whipped around and Naruto felt his whole body bend around the blow that hammered into his stomach.

He bounced backwards, flung or kicked, or maybe punched, he couldn't tell, it was _so fast_ – he bounced across the tables, distantly aware of more screaming, he crashed into someone, thin wiry arms around him and then they stopped.

He saw the other three boys casually bounced off the green clad giant who bellowed a laugh and... struck a pose?

He flinched as light _ping'ed_ off obnoxiously white teeth.

"I SEE THE FIRES OF **YOUTH** BURN BRIGHT WITHIN THIS CLASS! TEAM THREE WITH ME!"

Naruto goggled.

Was _this_ his Jounin sensei?

 _ **000**_

Naruto honestly had no idea what just happened. Some giant green man barged into their class, threw the overseeing Chuunin out a window after kicking the _sliding_ door open, destroyed the podium, used Naruto and three of his classmates to destroy five desks, and then just stood there laughing heartily as a trio of Chuunin burst in through the now open door way and started shouting at him about disruptions, property damage, and _Damnit Gai you've traumatised the Genin!_

"You okay?" Tenten asked as she carefully extracted herself from under him, she had been the one to grab him in midair and join him in destroying a few tables before managing to stop them both.

He nodded, a little dazed, "Bit winded," he admitted as he rubbed his chest because holy _hell_ , not even Mizuki hit him that hard – and he could hit way harder than Iruka-sensei, or Sakura-chan.

The two of them got to their feet, sticking close, as they watched the green giant laugh merrily at the angry Chuunin buzzing around him. He was easily a foot taller than all three of them, his body was broad and clad in tight forest green matt spandex, he wore the jounin's uniform flack jacket, and a pair of orange leg-warmers that were a bit too bulky to be _just_ leg warmers, he probably had weapons hidden in them. Naruto would have thought his muscles would be chiselled into sharp relief given just how physically _strong_ he was, but their sensei actually had some chub to him, hiding just how beastly that muscle was – it would be of absolutely _no_ surprise if the man tensed and revealed an eight-pack under that spandex. The most unbelievable thing about him though...

"I think his eyebrows are bigger than my hand," Tenten quietly, unknowingly, echoed his thoughts. Naruto nodded fervently because _what the hell_.

Chaos reigned a little longer in the classroom, at least until the Chuunin that got kicked out of the window arrived and unceremoniously booted everyone out of his classroom with a bellow of ' _You owe me a fucking drink Maito, now sod off with your brats!_ '. It was... an illuminating experience. Especially when their Sensei saluted with a cheery 'Yosh!', scooped _all three of them up_ in his arms, and suddenly they were in the middle of a training ground, and getting dropped on their asses in the dirt.

Their new Sensei grunted, _loudly_ , and stared at them while 'hmmMMMmmHmHHHmmmMMM'ing at varying volumes.

Naruto glanced at Tenten who looked over at him, she shrugged at his quizzical nod towards him, the two of them glanced to their third teammate who had the expression of someone forced to clean a puddle of vomit as he stared at their teacher with mounting scorn. He caught their notice, and sniffed once shortly, and turned a little away from them. Tenten's eyebrow shot up in disapproval, and Naruto scowled in familiar offence.

Great.

Sasuke 2.0

At least Tenten seemed awesome.

"Are you... alright, sensei?" the kunoichi asked carefully when he showed no intention of doing anything but growling at various volumes while peering at them and _grinning_. Naruto wondered if he could talk Jiji into trading this guy in, he was clearly defective.

The man bellowed with laughter, making the three jump, and struck a familiar pose. It was the same one he struck after he sent them through five tables. Naruto twitched to see its reappearance.

"HAH-HAAAAA! THE BEAUTY OF MY YOUNG KONOHA BLOSSOM IS BOTH INSIDE AND OUT!" the man roared happily, throwing both of his arms up enthusiastically. Naruto felt Tenten cringe and recoil a little bit behind him in both disgust and revulsion, and a little bit of fear because – Naruto had heard language like _that_ before. He lived on the outskirts of the Red Lantern district after all.

Anger flashed hot and violent, "HEY! KEEP YOUR GROSS HANDS TO YOURSELF!" he snarled, bristling furiously as he shifted properly in front of his new teammate. So help him Kami, if he ended up with a perv for a teacher he was going to Hokage Jiji and making his displeasure both _loud_ and _**messy**_.

The man struck another pose, he grinned at them as if Naruto hadn't spoken, arms folded, one hand up to his face forming a 'tick' with his thumb and index finger on his chin. His teeth pinged again. And as a group, the three of them twitched.

"I am Konoha's Beautiful Azure Beast, Maito Gai, Taijutsu Master, and Jounin Instructor to the Youthful Team Three! Your team! My interests are HEALTHY LIVING, THE FIRES OF YOUTH, AND FULL POWERED MAXIMUM **EFFORT!** " he roared once again, throwing both arms up, and bellowing a laugh up to the heavens. He calmed, cocking one hip and planting a hand on it before waggling an outstretched finger at them, "I do not tolerate sots, layabouts, or liars! My greatest ambition is to prove that one need only put forward their maximum determination and effort into training in order to become a splendid Shinobi! And my dream is to one day train the most Youthful Team Konoha has ever beheld!"

The three of them exchanged looks before Tenten twitched a small slightly awkward smile, "I-I'm Mitsutoshi Tenten. I live with my Grand-Uncle who runs a weapon shop. I like fortune telling, and sesame dumplings. I'm not a _great_ fan of pickled plums, and I really hate indecisive wishy-washy people. My dream is to become an incredible kunoichi like Senju Tsunade-sama!" she declared, eyes burning with determination as she clenched her fists tightly.

"Yosh! A worthy dream!" their sensei agreed, at volume.

He then turned expectantly to Naruto.

"The name's Uzumaki Naruto, dattebayo! I like ramen, pranks, Sakura-chan, an' gardening! I really hate the three minutes you gotta wait after you pour the water in, and people who glare at me for no reason. My dream is to become the next Hokage! The strongest and most awesome ever!" he vowed, straightening his hitai-ate determinedly. Their teacher's loud exclamation about his youthful determination _almost_ drowned out the derisive scoff their third teammate huffed out under his breath. But Naruto heard it all the same and bristled angrily, hackles rising up as he gritted his teeth and _glared_ at the Sasuke-wannabe.

"Hyuuga Neji. I prefer to spend my time meditating and training. My dislikes are my business. My ambition matters not, my fate is already decided," their dour third teammate declared coldly, arms folded and looking straight ahead, ignoring the two of them and their Sensei with a stoicism that he probably thought made him look cool. Man, Naruto wanted to mess him up.

"YOSHAAAA! Now that we're all acquainted, my most youthful Konoha Saplings, it is time for your _true_ Genin Test to begin!" their teacher roared, just as Naruto felt his stomach drop.

"True – OI WHAT THE HELL BUSHYBROWS!" he bellowed, jumping to his feet absolutely livid. He had _earned this headband!_ He _**earned it**_ , damnit! No! No! No no no _**no!**_ He _earned it, dattebayo_! No one could take it away from him! No!

"Of the twenty seven youthful students of your class, only nine have the fiery passion needed to become true Konoha Ninja! The other eighteen will be sent back to the Academy to brush up on their training. Your final Genin test has a sixty-six percent failure rating," the green beast proclaimed dramatically, striking another pose as he nodded seriously. Apparently ignorant to his three students' reactions.

"Sixty six – no way," Tenten breathed, her eyes stinging.

"I earned it, I won't let you beat me," Naruto grit out, his entire face screwed up as he ground his teeth together, trembling with pent up anger.

"I do not think it is in my Fate to fail on this day," Neji announced coldly, his pearl coloured eyes narrowing on the Jounin in front of him.

Gai grinned toothily. "Your task is to prove to me you have the _Gumption_ , the _determination_ , the _FIRES OF YOUTH_ , NEEDED TO BECOME A KONOHA SHINOBI! **HIT ME** – THAT IS YOUR TASK! IF YOU FAIL I SEND YOU BACK TO THE ACADEMY!

"BEGIN!"

Naruto's face promptly bounced off the fist he ran into.

Neji did a weird spinny thing and tried to slap the man like he'd seen a few of the girls do when they got into cat-fights in his first year, he too got mowed to one side like someone slapping a fly out of the air.

Tenten didn't fair much better. He caught her wrists and held her out stretched like an errant puppy, casually swaying his body out of the rain of kicks she threw at him.

The following three hours and a half were just _embarrassing_.

Naruto laid traps, he worked in tandem with Tenten, they even dragged Neji into it all – though he was as stiff and standoffish and just plain _difficult_. Naruto almost wanted to hit him more than Gai-sensei. Almost. Because Uzumaki Naruto was no quitter and he wasn't about to let some shitty-ass teammate lose him the chance to graduate properly as a Shinobi! All three of them went at him at the same time, they tried multiple different tactics and methods for taking him out.

Every time his temper of the better of him and he bum-rushed the Taijutsu specialist, Naruto ended up bouncing his face off the man's clenched fist.

His eyes were so bruised and swollen he could barely make out the blur of his teacher.

And throughout it all the man heckled them gleefully, threatening to send them back to the Academy if they didn't prove themselves to him – what did he even _want_ from them?! Fires of Youth? What the actual hell?

Tenten and Neji could barely stand, and Naruto was going to be nursing bruises for at _least_ three days after this. But none of them were going to give up.

"Naru-to," Tenten wheezed, roughly swiping sweat from her forehead, "Throw me – at 'im. I can't – I can't run anymore. Throw me at him," she demanded hoarsely.

Naruto coughed and grinned, "You got it. We'll go again, and again, how ever many times it takes. I ain't giving up now, not ever," he growled.

"That's the – spirit," the girl panted sticking her sweaty arm out.

Naruto grabbed her wrist and forearm, and jerked her around. She staggered the first few paces, tensing her arm so he didn't end up wrenching it out of her shoulder socket, and then jumped, her body coiling into a ball as he swung her like a shot-put, and _launched_ her at their teacher.

He saw her coming, of course he did.

And he ducked – right into Neji, headbutting the Hyuuga into the ground.

Tenten didn't even have the energy to squeal when she tumbled into the dirt, limbs sprawling as she rag-dolled across the training ground to a stop.

Naruto lunged at the giant when he turned as if to go after her.

Thus far he hadn't left the clearing, none of them had save when Naruto encouraged them to switch out and rest in the trees one at a time. It was probably the only reason they were still going.

"Pick up the _pace_ , my youthful Saplings!" their teacher chided disappointedly, striking a pose that Naruto was rapidly beginning to hate, "Carry on like this and it will be back to the Academy with the _first_ years!"

Oh that was too far!

"Not – on – your – life!" Neji hissed as he levered himself up from the ground.

"I'm going – to – scalp you – and – wear – that – bowl-cut – as a – fashion – accessory!" Tenten panted, her legs spasming, her knees bowing under her weight as she staggered to her feet.

Naruto didn't say anything, just snarled in wordless determination as he staggered towards the Jounin, forcing rubbery limbs to function, bruised and overworked muscles to flex. He couldn't _see_ but he could hear where the man was standing, make out the smears of pink and grey that were Neji and Tenten, the bigger blot of green that was just a few shades too close to mint to be natural to Konoha's trees.

He lashed out. It was pathetic. No strength, nothing, he may as well be falling with his fist outstretched.

But it landed.

Three soft 'pap'ing noises swam through his ears, not quite exactly at the same time, they staggered by less than a split second – and then their Sensei _**ROARED**_!

Naruto couldn't hear it, didn't know what was said, but the next second he was being crushed, and rained on, and that was a shoulder in his ribs that was far too bony to be their sensei's and it smelt like jasmine so it was probably Neji because Tenten smelt faintly like peony blossoms, and Gai-sensei smelt like sweat and moss. And he couldn't breathe.

Everything ached.

But foggily, through the exhausted haze that felt like wading through sticky honey, he heard:

"Congratulations Team Three! You _pass!_ "

 _ **000**_

Naruto was the first to wake up.

He was laying on something soft with a thin blanket draped over him, the scent of fresh juice and something delicious tickling his nose as he slowly wrestled his eyelids open. He was lying on a spread open blanket, Tenten on his right, Neji on her other side, they were covered by a thin blanket, and in front of them he could see Gai-sensei doing squats while muttering some kind of training regime under his breath as he worked. It was kind of mesmerizing to watch the flex and shift of his thigh muscles as he worked.

It took a few seconds for what he was muttering to really penetrate his brain though.

It was a training regime for _them_.

Neji's flexibility was good, as was his agility, but he had the ability for pin-point accuracy that would better aid him with his Jyuuken. ' _Train him to be a senbon instead of a hammer_ ' Gai-sensei decided under his breath as he lifted one leg to cross it over his other, and continue squatting without pause or any visible sign of strain. Naruto gaped. Neji's attitude was cause for concern as well, would have to nip that resentment and fatalism in the bud before it took over and affected his drive. A fatalistic ninja was one that gave up far too easily on the field and got themselves and their teammates killed. Inferiority-superiority complex. Naruto had no idea what those words even were, but it sounded serious.

Tenten was neither as fast, or as strong as either of them, but she had a good head on her shoulders and an eye for accuracy and rhythm in combat that would see her _far_. Combined with her extensive knowledge of weaponry, likely gained from her Uncle and the weapon-shop she grew up in, they had the makings of a great mid-to-long range specialist within the team. She had proven herself to be adept at tactics, able to direct her teammates with minimal fuss in a combat exchange. Tentative plans to make her the team 'Control Tower' so to speak, drill her extensively in tactics and formations. Drill all of them. Neji was highly intelligent, but his attitude would be a severe problem in this field. Naruto was exceptionally cunning and off the chain with his tactics, he would be able to provide additional ideas and insights that would give Tenten new avenues of attack. Yes, yes, that would work out well. She most definitely had a quick enough mind and the confidence to follow through on her plans without the mulish hardheadedness that would prevent her from accepting advice or ideas from teammates, or refusal to discard one plan in favour of something else.

Neji groaned then, cutting their teacher off from finishing his muttering. Naruto wanted to hit him. He stopped him before he could get to the good bit – the one about him! Naruto wanted to know what Gai-sensei thought of him, where he could improve, what he should learn, what his role in the team should be!

Immediately their new teacher whirled around, _beaming_ , but didn't bellow or roar. Instead, he crouched down beside them and reached over their heads.

"How are you two doing?" he asked in a surprisingly normal, if lowered in respect for the still sleeping kunoichi, tone as he handed them a bamboo cup filled with an orangey coloured sweet smelling juice.

"Did we pass?" Neji demanded in a croak instead of anything else.

"You did. Welcome to the most youthful Team Three, Neji-kun," Gai-sensei beamed as Naruto experimentally sipped the foreign drink, his eyes widening in shock before he started gulping it down as fast as possible. The Jounin chuckled, "It isn't going anywhere, Naruto-kun, and I have more. Slow yourself before you choke," he suggested, gently lowering the cup with a finger.

"It's really good, what is it?" the blond asked eagerly, it was _awesome_.

"You've never had mango juice?" Neji demanded sceptically.

"No, never," Naruto admitted, eagerly slurping another mouthful. "I mostly stick to water and chunky milk."

Both of them paused at that, "Chunky – " Neji echoed, face twisting in revulsion while Gai just went wide eyed.

Naruto shrugged, "They're always sold out of the smooth stuff. It isn't so bad." He hummed happily with his cup, "I mean, sure you get a sour bottle now and again, and the lumps have a gross kinda texture to them that used to make me gag a lot but – "

Gai-sensei suddenly thrust a finger into his face, "I admire your Fires of Youth, Naruto-kun, you have done well to manage yourself thus far in your life! _However_! My training is no joke. Without proper nutrition it runs the risk of permanently damaging your body and stunting your summer years. I will be writing up a meal plan for you, and your teammates. It will fully optimise your full powered determination and spirit in the springtime of youth!" the green clad man declared, waggling his finger and flashing the youngest of his genin another blinding smile that caused light to ping from his teeth.

It took a moment for Naruto to figure out what he actually meant. Flowery language like that automatically put his back up because it reminded him so much of the bullcrap he heard said to the girls who lived near-by, and knowing what kind of sleaze they had to deal with meant that he was predisposed to thinking the worst. It took a little effort to shift mental gears because he was ninety-nine percent sure that Gai-sensei wasn't like that.

Naruto nodded slowly, "That makes sense, but, I'm not allowed into a lot of places, dattebayo," he admitted a little sheepishly, "Too many pranks." He was banned from a _lot_ of shops, he had honestly forgotten just how many and why, usually because he got pissed off when they said he was banned and pranked them _again_ but – yeah. He wasn't allowed in a lot of places because his own temper got the better of him at times.

Neji scoffed and turned his head away, "Any ninja incapable of the simple infiltration of a civilian shop is fated to – "

Naruto jumped to his feet furiously, cutting him off, "YOU THINK I HAVEN'T TRIED THAT, DATTEBAYO?! DO STUFF LIKE THAT AND THEY'LL THINK YOU'RE A THIEF AND YOU END UP SLAPPED WITH A CRIMINAL RECORD EVEN THOUGH YOU HAVEN'T DONE ANYTHING!" he howled furiously, kicking dirt at the older boy who shifted to protect his juice from getting contaminated.

"Again, that just means you're a failure as a ninja, and fated to a life of failure as well," the Hyuuga sneered dismissively.

Naruto pounced.

Gai caught him by the back of his neck and cheerfully hoisted him off the ground before he could _land_ on his teammate and beat him black and blue for calling him a failure. He was going to be _Hokage, damnit!_

"I see your Fires of Youth burn brightly, Naruto-kun, but lashing out in anger will swiftly see them doused rather sooner than I would like," Gai-sensei warned him kindly before gently setting him on his feet. "Neji-kun, you are to be working together with Naruto-kun as a teammate. Alienating each other in this early stage will only damage your career in future."

"Yes, Sensei. If it is my fate to be dragged down by the inept, then so be it," the brunet sniffed coolly as he pointedly ignored Naruto bristling like an infuriated cat, Gai-sensei's hand firm and restraining on his bony shoulder.

Naruto ground his teeth, glaring death at his male teammate.

He took it back, this guy wasn't Sasuke 2.0, _he was worse_.

 _ **0000**_

 **Ahahaha, I said they wouldn't get along at first. Character development is going to take a** **while** **. And unlike canon, Naruto isn't going to be able to Therapy No Jutsu beat him into changing his ways because Neji can literally kerb stomp him rn, also, Naruto is a brat right now so wouldn't even know how to Therapy his way out of a paperbag.**


	3. Chapter 3

Accidents happen, and sometimes by design. Naruto was determined to become a Genin, it was just his luck that this year they were being tested in the Kawarimi instead of the Bunshin due to a single lazy Admin-chuunin. Team Gai!Naruto, Maito!Lee (adoption yay), BAMF!everyone.

 _ **000**_

 **Chapter Three**

Things did not improve over the next three weeks.

Tenten was great, he would fight anyone that said otherwise and totally kick their asses. If she didn't do it first. Ten-chan was _determined_ to become exactly like her hero, Senju Tsunade, student of Hokage-jiji and granddaughter to the Shodai. A kunoichi that pioneered the field of medicine, and was capable of destroying _mountains_ with her fists. Naruto had never met a girl who trained as relentlessly as himself before, she was _awesome_. It was a bit embarrassing when she took one look at his 'special' kunai and started screeching in fury over pig iron and shoddy workmanship. His 'fuuinjutsu' imbued kunai were in fact just shitty pig-iron discards that weren't even fit for the scrap bin. But he couldn't help the blinding grin from crossing his face every time he thought of how she dragged him into her uncle's shop, spitting mad, and ranting furiously on his behalf about it, and the outrage her uncle had displayed on his behalf as well. As far as the Mitsutoshi family were concerned, knowingly selling someone subpar weapons may as well have been a sin on par with spitting on the Shodai's grave. Naruto got himself an entire brace of shiny new, sharp kunai and shuriken, and a family discount from Old Man Mitsutoshi himself as he was Ten-chan's new teammate and that made him family as far as he was concerned.

Gai-sensei was fruity as _all get out_ , but he knew his shit when it came to Taijutsu, and even to just general training. He was true to his word about the meal plans, and even surprised them with dedicated and well thought-out training _plans_ for improving their current skill sets, improving their weaknesses, and he always explained why he wanted them to do something when asked. He took Naruto out in order to get decent food, not quite ranting but definitely extolling the virtues of various grocery vendors over the others, which fruit and veg were best, how to tell good cuts of meat from bad, and what he should look for depending on what effects he was looking for with his diet. He also showed Naruto to his personal favourites, and introduced him to the owners and shop assistants, beaming as if the shine from his teeth were weaponised as they looked between him and his student with expressions of barely concealed horror and dismay as they weakly assured him that he would always be welcome on their premises. That they did it without looking at him with those cold-cold eyes that he hated so much had him solemnly apologising in case he'd ever pranked them and promising that it wouldn't happen again.

(He resolutely didn't shed any tears when he was finally able to go home with his very own bottle of smooth milk.)

As for Neji...

He was a genius. There was no deny it. The older boy was highly intelligent, coldly logical, and massively athletic. The first time Gai-sensei declared a team-wide sparring free for all, the Hyuuga genius hit Naruto like a frickin' earth dragon. Not quite as hard as Gai-sensei or Mizuki-sensei, but definitely harder than Sakura-chan or Iruka-sensei. He was stronger than Sasuke, and Naruto _hated him_.

That someone could be so _strong_ , and _talented_ , but so _**pathetic**_ turned his stomach and made him sick with disgust.

And Naruto couldn't even kick his ass into shape, he wasn't strong enough yet. _**Yet**_.

Officially, their mornings began at nine in the morning. Unofficially, Naruto showed up at the training ground at five am in order to begin his morning conditioning with Gai-sensei. It wasn't special treatment, Gai-sensei told both Tenten and Neji about the morning conditioning and gave them both an open invitation to come, Tenten actually did fairly often. But Naruto _needed_ the extra help, so every morning without fail he would be there ready to run around the walls of Konoha a hundred times before the sun rose. His stamina was nothing to sneeze at, and he was usually the only one on the team able to keep up with Gai-sensei during their conditioning, but his Taijutsu was so awful that Gai-sensei had given them the afternoon off after seeing it and went straight to the Hokage's office. Naruto heard a rumour the next day that Mizuki-sensei had been taken to Interrogation, something about sabotage and attempted assassination. And then the rumours were silenced so sharply it could only mean that they found something _worse_ than those things and now there was an official investigation. Usually minor things were allowed to be gossiped about, but big things were silenced, and brutally.

Neji rarely showed up their pre-day training. Every now and again he would stomp in and work himself to exhaustion in silence. He was like a _machine_ on those days. Refusing to speak, scowling darkly at nothing without even _seeing_ what he was looking at, and just going, going, _going_. They learned to leave him be after the first time Tenten tried to cajole him out of his black mood and ended up coughing up blood after a sharp jab to her shoulder that accidentally clipped the top of her lung (that had started a fight that nearly broke the team up. Gai-sensei rushed her to the hospital tootsweet, but Naruto went for Neji with a _fury_. It was only the look of stunned horror on the young genius's face in the split second before the blond ploughed into him that made Naruto drop the kunai before he punched the Hyuuga in the throat. Gai-sensei had to come back and separate them, and then take them to the hospital as well where they ended up on beds next to their teammate. Naruto didn't regret _any_ of it, even if Tenten told him he was being stupid).

Gai-sensei usually guided Naruto through a quick warm-up in the mornings before official training as he didn't _technically_ need the conditioning that the others did, his stamina was on jounin level anyway. So usually they got stuck in on Taijutsu training immediately. Katas, drills, techniques, styles, the works.

Since his last name was Uzumaki, Gai-sensei loudly exclaimed that he may as well learn a Taijutsu style befitting his name to start with and guided him through a lot of flowy motions that reminded him a lot of Neji's stupid slap-fu, and at _first_ Naruto was, like, ninety-nine percent certain he would end up tripping over his feet performing it (he was a brawler, and he knew it). But once Gai-sensei had conditioned him on his balance, and the two of them went through the katas again, he found himself taking to it well. Almost like it was made for him. Sensei called it Tai Chi Quan, and seemed to want to add something, but instead only grinned _extra_ hard at him and showed him a classic thumbs up.

' _I'll show you other styles once you have the basics down pat. That way you can choose, or create, your very own Youthful style!_ ' he exclaimed with a proud fist pump.

On top of endless Taijutsu and physical conditioning, Gai-sensei set aside Saturdays wholly dedicated to Chakra control, and Thursdays to learning and perfecting their Ninjutsu. Thus far, they didn't have _many_ , but the moment they found out that Naruto had broken records for his Kawarimi distance, they immediately started practising with it. Thus far, they hadn't yet found a limit to how far he could go, or how many people he could take with him. In fact, it was _easier_ the further away and more people he took. It got _harder_ to swap himself the closer he was to where he stood. The strain was eased somewhat by how small the object he swapped with was. One time he managed to swap with just _air_ which was totally cool but also much easier than the pot he had originally been aiming for.

It hadn't taken much to figure out that Naruto had ridiculous chakra reserves from those experiments. Too much really to be controlled in any fine amount. Medical Ninjutsu would forever be out of his reach unless he quite _literally_ dedicated his entire life to obtaining and then _maintaining_ his chakra control to the point of excluding everything else.

Tenten didn't have the chakra control for it either, not _yet_ she swore. Much like Naruto she had large chakra reserves for her age and, oddly, for her gender. Apparently kunoichi were known for greater control but smaller reserves, something that Tenten wasn't going to take sitting down if her angry growling was any indication. Over the last few days, she had been showing up with a new Chakra Control exercise every day and going through them at a frightening pace.

They dedicated Sundays to doing D-ranks around the village, during which they learned a lot of surprising facts about each other. Naruto was a fantastic botanist and gardener who could repair or jury-rig almost anything, Tenten could cook a mean curry and loved juggling knives for the entertainment of small children, Neji knew how to get stains out of _everything_ , literally, it didn't matter what the stain was, whether it was on a wall or a pair of trousers, he had _some_ method of removing it. He was also stupidly weak to small children, grumpy, scowling, but utterly putty to the under fives. Not to keen on anyone _over_ the age of five, but plonk a baby in his lap and he held it like the most precious thing on earth. Naruto couldn't handle mould, and heavy perfumes had him hacking up a lung and needing to leave the room, and Tenten had awful taste in interior decorating. They hadn't yet found anything that Neji was actually bad at. Which was utterly infuriating for the normal members of Team Three. He was even good with animals as they learned when they were sent off on a classic Tora Retrieval mission, and their Hyuuga teammate had the damn cat caught within twenty minutes and returned to the owner within thirty. Apparently he had a cat at home.

"Is there nothing that asshole is bad at?" Naruto griped unhappily Sunday evening as he perched in the corner of Tenten's smithy. Sunday evenings were their only free slot in the week, both Neji and Tenten spent it with their families mostly, Naruto would sometimes go and drag Hokage-jiji out to ramen (paying for it himself because now he was going on missions and had _money_ ), other times just mope around at home being bored, or training on his own because it wasn't like he had anything else to do. But this time Tenten invited them over for dinner after their last D-rank of the day (Tora again), and while Neji had begged off because he had chores to do, both Naruto and Gai gleefully took her up on the offer. Gai-sensei was currently with old man Mitsutoshi gushing over nunchaku, bo staves, and weights. Naruto and Tenten had escaped into the forge because there were frickin' sparkles forming in the air around the two.

His female teammate scoffed as she examined the edge of a kunai in the light, "Of course there is, Naru-chan. No one's good at _everything_. Kami knows Neji's actually pretty awful at talking to people, and has about as much tact as a Kumo Ninja's greeting. ' _Hi how are you have a lightning jutsu to the face_ '," she mocked in an upbeat if gravelly voice. She sniffed as she flicked the sharpened kunai into the target over Naruto's head. After three weeks of working with her, he didn't even flinch. Ten-chan's accuracy was good enough to pin a mouse through the eyeball at five hundred yards.

"Still annoying though," Naruto grumbled, planting his chin on his elbow, "Where does he get off looking down on us, anyway?"

Tenten hummed as she shrugged a shoulder and started peddling the grind-stone back up to speed, "Well, the Hyuuga are a noble clan, y'know? I heard their Kekkei Genkai gives them super eyesight, maybe you're just dirty?" she teased with a sly smile at the edge of a kunai. Naruto blushed angrily and stuck his tongue out at her. It _wasn't_ his fault that his shower was busted, and the landlord would do shit all about it. Naruto had done _everything_ he could, the damn thing needed replacing. It just couldn't be fixed anymore. It was currently held together with more tape and prayers than Gai-sensei's reputation with women.

He even washed in the damn river this morning. He was pretty sure it wasn't his hygiene causing the expression of disgust on the Hyuuga's face. More just his general existence on the team.

"Or maybe its your clothes?" Tenten suggested a little more seriously, eyeing the orange jumpsuit thoughtfully, "That shade must be pretty painful for someone who sees like ten times better than us on multiple levels. Why _do_ you wear orange anyway, kind of a bad colour for a ninja?"

"Says the girl that wears pink," he retorted sourly before sighing and leaning back, kicking his feet out to stare at his toes, "They got dumped in the alley outside my flats. They were part of come construction thing, but they weren't selling, so the owners dumped 'em. And since they've never actually let me in their store, I figured why not take 'em? I mean, they're double lined, water proof, warm, there's pockets upon pockets, loops for equipment, the knees, groin, and elbows are reinforced, and there were like thirty of them in all kinds of sizes. They'll probably last me up until Jounin," he admitted lazily with a grin.

Tenten chuckled, "Shame the colour'll get you killed before then."

Naruto pointed playfully at her, "Oi, don't diss the orange! Bet you I could paint the Hokage-monument in it and not get caught!"

She laughed, "No bet, ANBU would catch you in half a minute!"

"You doubt the greatness of Uzumaki Naruto?" he exclaimed in mock hurt.

"Nope, I just have faith in our Village security!" she retorted with a bright laugh.

"More fool you," he mumbled before stretching until he heard something pop and sighed in relief. "It's been three weeks... I wanna try a C-rank," he decided lazily.

The kunoichi hummed in agreement, "We've been training like crazy, and we've done enough D-ranks to qualify for it by now." With Neji catching the cat within half an hour, those days they were able to get three to four missions done, meaning that by now they had nine missions under their belt. Enough to compete in the Chuunin exams if they wanted, once they had that C-rank under their belt.

The blond flopped back on the work bench and stared up at the dusty ceiling beams above, "Ne... think we'll get one if we talk Neji into agreeing with us?" he asked softly.

"If you let me do the talking, sure," was the immediate response. Naruto couldn't help but twitch a grin as he heard the grinder start back up. Well, she wasn't wrong there...

 _ **000**_

That particular conversation ended up having to wait a while.

Whether he was having a bad hair day (impossible because like everything else his hair was _annoyingly perfect_ ), or something had happened at home, Neji was in one of his black moods when he showed up for training that day, a little later than usual as well, which was decidedly off in of itself. Gai-sensei said nothing, merely told him to get warmed up and today they would be doing Escape and Evasion Drills in the forest, Taijutsu only, no Chakra augmentation either. Which meant Tree walking was also out – a skill they'd learned only in the last few days, and were still a little wobbly on.

Gai-sensei was their pursuer as usual, but unlike them, he would be using chakra, only Academy level Ninjutsu and the occasional C-rank Katon, but nothing too dangerous. Especially not at their current level.

It was actually going pretty well.

But then it all fell apart.

Naruto saw it before Neji, he didn't even think Neji _could_ see it.

A single kunai had gotten through his guard. Aimed right at his spine. For some reason, he hadn't seen it even _with_ the Byakuran being active – the only technique that Gai-sensei had allowed for the drill as it wasn't something that could be discarded and the Chakra use was actually impossible to detect unless you were a gifted Sensor.

Naruto twisted in place, bouncing off a branch, and tackled him out of the tree – just as the kunai sailed over their heads.

The two of them landed hard in a pretty rank puddle of stagnant mud, and rolled into the bushes.

Neji shoved him off, red faced, furious, his Byakuran bulging and his arm drawing back, and a split second -

His hand was blue -

 _ **000**_

"He Jyuuken'd you in the face, Naruto," Tenten seethed at his bedside, supposedly peeling an apple but so angry she just ended up mutilating it instead. He had been out for two days apparently, the chakra spike had done him some damage and the nurses were concerned about eye problems as there was nothing on their brain-scans but his face had taken the brunt of a pretty intense blow. Neji had been written up on an official Disciplinary for attacking his teammate with a near-lethal technique, especially to the head. Gai-sensei had been keeping him away from the hospital, and away from his clan, Tenten didn't say what they were doing, but she was refusing to speak to Neji outside training or teamwork exercises. The Hyuuga kept his head down, his mouth shut, and followed suit like a sulky brat according to her.

"Yeah, so?" the blond asked curiously, "I feel fine. C'mon Ten-chan, help me escape!" he whined.

She stabbed the knife into the pillow beside his head, "Not until the nurse discharges you," she growled intensely.

Naruto wilted into his bedding with wide eyes, "Yes ma'am."

She primly removed the knife and returned to her butchery of innocent fruit. "Besides, a nurse is showing up in a few minutes to do an eye-test. And I don't know about you, but I've never heard of a blind Ninja."

He spluttered, "I'm not blind though!"

She waved the knife dismissively, "Eyes are delicate. What's to say the retinal nerve isn't unravelling as we speak and you'll be properly blind within a week?"

Naruto subsided into his bedding with a grimace, that sounded pretty bad actually. He didn't want to go blind. No one would take a blind ninja seriously, it was quite _literally_ a career ending injury.

There was a loud clatter outside, and the unmistakable sound of their sensei's voice, though what he was saying was unintelligible, probably something about Youth, Fire, Blossoms, and Passion knowing him. Tenten eyed the door with something approaching hostility, lifting her knife, and a moment later, a rather harassed looking nurse marched in, Gai-sensei on her heels, and Neji trailing after him in subdued silence.

"He's _fine_ Maito-san," the nurse snapped when their teacher paused to draw breath, apparently she'd been trying to interrupt for a while if the way she looked fit to hit him with her clipboard was any indication, "You're lucky it was _this_ student and not one of the others, whatever damage there was healed itself over the last few days. He just needs glasses, glasses that I have here, in my damn hand, now shut up!" she finally barked having lost patience.

Naruto spluttered, "Glasses?! I don't need glass – "

She hit him in the face with the small wooden case, "Yes, you _do_ , Uzumaki-kun! I'm shocked that no one has noticed already, but your vision is atrocious! You are short sighted, it's why you've been squinting at everything, you could never read the board at the Academy could you? Words in books and scrolls just don't make sense, the characters just blur and bleed across the page? Well, put those on and tell me how the world looks with a new pair of eyes!"

He stared down at the box in his hands, the single white label written across it with his name, and a series of letters and numbers. His left eye had higher numbers. -3.75 and -1.50x150 to his right eye's -3.00 and 0.50x10. He didn't know what any of them meant, but it must have been pretty bad with all those minuses. Snapping open the little wooden case, he eyed the large round things with distaste, plain black metal with glass disks. The lenses were perfectly round and would undoubtedly dominate his face. A little like Shino's sunglasses but three times the size.

Tenten grimaced, "Does he _have_ to have those frames?" she asked the nurse.

"Here's a leaflet. His prescription is on the back. Get this back to the front desk before noon and he'll be able to pick up new frames tomorrow afternoon, the Medic Nin on the pick-up will reshape those lenses to the new frames," the nurse explained shoving a small plain paper pamphlet at the young Kunoichi, watching Naruto with hawk-like intensity as he carefully shifted the glasses onto his face, and then held his breath.

"How does it look, Naruto-kun?" Gai-sensei asked nervously, practically vibrating in place, Neji at his elbow.

"D-do people... actually see like this? Normally?" the blond asked quietly, staring around the room in wide eyed wonder, he looked at Tenten in something like wonder before grinning widely at her, "You're cuter than I thought you were, Ten-chan!" he cheered before looking at Gai-sensei and laughing, "And you have a _face_ under those eyebrows!" he cackled, pointing gleefully at his teacher who struck a pose and started to laugh along with him. He paused when he got to Neji, his face screwing up a little in dismay, "Smart _and_ pretty?! The hell! That's not fair! How the hell is a guy prettier than Sakura-chan?!"

The Hyuuga's face twisted in an expression of offended embarrassment as Tenten blurted out a cackle, and nearly stabbed herself with the knife she'd been peeling Naruto's mutilated apples with.

The nurse snorted, "Well, I can see that your glasses are working. Get out of here, all of you. And don't forget, noon, or they'll have to wait another three days," she warned before turning on heel, grabbing a bag from a cupboard and pitching it at Naruto's face, the blond snatching it up easily astounded that – he could actually gauge how far away it was in the air, it wasn't a blob of colour zooming towards him anymore. She nodded, pleased that his depth perception was functional, and then strutted out of the room with a smug smile on her lips, one that fell a moment later when she remembered that she had to deal with that Jounin on the third floor that kept trying to pinch her ass whenever she adjusted his bed.

Tenten grinned at her favourite teammate, "I'll choose your frames, if you're alright with that, Naruto?" she asked, showing him the pamphlet. The blond nodded, still staring at his hands in fascination, he could actually _see_ his fingernails, in detail! Damn, they were dirty. Maybe Tenten had a point about his poor hygiene.

It was then that Gai-sensei gave Neji a not so discreet nudge forward, the Hyuuga boy shuffling to the foot of Naruto's bed with an air of reluctance that didn't show on his face. Naruto stared at him warily, shifting his grip on his belongings so they couldn't be snatched back or away from him.

"I – I would like to apologise Uzumaki-san, and to beg your forgiveness for my unacceptable, and uncalled for, attack upon your person during our training exercise. I am sorry," he announced smoothly, and bowed formally, just a little.

Nothing showed on his face, but every line of his body screamed reluctance, and resentment.

Naruto stared at him long and hard, and knew that if it wouldn't have given him away Neji would have been clenching his fists angrily the longer it took him to answer. And he _knew_ he should forgive Neji for hitting him, but if that had been Tenten the nurse insinuated that it might have killed or maimed her. But for some reason, he survived, and that was to be expected. But Neji wasn't apologising of his own volition, he didn't feel sorry for what he did, and in the blond's experience, that just meant he was likely to do it again. Just like Sakura-chan had done the first time she hit him, she had been shocked and horrified and apologised profusely, and when he told her it was fine, that he had a hard head and he'd had worse, she accepted it, and barely a week later did it again. Now hitting him didn't even make her blink, or pause, with guilt or shock at her own aggressive actions. And while it was Sakura-chan, who was always at her prettiest when she was passionate and powerful, that didn't mean that Naruto _liked_ being hit.

So, should he accept the forced apology? Or should he refuse it?

He grinned at him, eyes creased shut tightly so he wouldn't have to look at him, "Gimme ramen and we'll call it even when I kick your ass later, dattebayo!"

The flash of scorn and disgust made his mouth sour but he maintained his carefree grin. Neji could be as arrogant as he liked about it, he was the one that had to apologise to _Naruto_ because his temper got the better of him. Only time would tell if Neji was going to be one of those teammates, the ones that they were warned about in the Academy team-exercises, the kind that were just as much of a danger to the mission as their enemies. If he got to that point, then Naruto would go to Hokage-jiji if Gai-sensei didn't. He didn't _think_ that Gai-sensei would let his behaviour slide, but teachers had a bad habit of doing so as long as the abuse and sabotage was directed solely at Naruto himself. He would go to Gai-sensei about it first, and if nothing happened, then he would tell Hokage-jiji.

Either way, Naruto might have 'forgiven' Neji for his actions, but judging by Tenten's facial expression she certainly had _not_.

 _ **0000**_

 **Chapter finished!**

 **Yeah, Naruto needs glasses. It was a little headcanon I came up with that Reyrey fully supported when I mentioned it to her. Naruto is always squinting, he has trouble reading, refers to people by their most dominant facial or physical creatures, has difficulty recognising people, surroundings, and things that are flying directly at his face. Kyuubi didn't heal it because, well, it wasn't something that could be healed, he was born with it. That is his base.**

 **Incidentally, that's my old prescription there XDD The reason I didn't make his eyes SUPER SUPER bad was because it needed to be subtle enough that he could have gotten by with an active ninja career, but bad enough to give him a lot more difficulty.**


	4. Chapter 4

Accidents happen, and sometimes by design. Naruto was determined to become a Genin, it was just his luck that this year they were being tested in the Kawarimi instead of the Bunshin due to a single lazy Admin-chuunin. Team Gai!Naruto, Maito!Lee (adoption yay), BAMF!everyone.

 _ **000**_

 **Chapter Four**

The difference in Naruto's abilities now that he had a pair of glasses were remarkable, _astounding_ actually. With the narrow red oval hexagonal frames that were chakra treated to be super durable, a strap that went around his head so they wouldn't slip or get knocked off, and the glass itself heat-treated to be scratch resistant and dulled so as not to catch the light, the change to his face was just as pronounced as with his abilities.

His accuracy went from roughly sixty-five/seventy percent, through the roof to ninety-five/a hundred percent. His sparring, now that he could see people's eyes, spot their muscle flexing, how they shifted their weight, how they moved, coupled with his own instinctive and ingrained awareness of being half _blind_ for most of his life gave him an almost preternatural awareness in fights. Before, he was the weakest in the team in Taijutsu, now he was putting Tenten on her back nine times out of ten, and was slowly inching up on Neji.

Something the Hyuuga wasn't happy about, just as much as he was _confused_ by it.

Then Tenten introduced the blond to reading.

"Now you can actually _see_ what's on the page, here, this was my favourite book when I was in the Academy," the bun haired Kunoichi explained as she presented him with a simple, somewhat thin white paperback after training one afternoon. Friday evenings was Tactics training, so it was largely non-combat towards the end as they spent most of the time hashing out what went wrong and what could be improved on their exercise from earlier. But Naruto was still dirty and had to take the book very carefully so as not to get it equally as dirty, or bloody (Tenten managed to kick him in the face, and while his nose had stopped bleeding, he was still covered in it).

"' _Nodoka, the bravest little Kunoichi_ '," he recited carefully, looking down at the single inked on image of a book on the cover under the title.

Tenten nodded smiling, "It's a kids' book, so it's easy to read, but the story's pretty good. The girl, Nodoka, partners up with a foreign Shinobi who gives her a blank book. She's really bad at Ninjutsu and Taijutsu, but super good at Fuuinjutsu so she fills the book with seals and blends them together. One day, when her Shinobi partner is in danger, she manages to get some of his enemy's blood, and pours it into her book, and there, laid out in front of her, are all of his thoughts. She uses her book to figure out his plan and defeat him, before going to his village to stop his evil Kage from using his Kekkei Genkai to destroy her home village. The book tells it better," she admitted with a self-conscious smile, rubbing the back of her head, "Sorry I made it sound so lame, but it _is_ good, I swear!"

"Thanks! I'll – I'll definitely try to read it," Naruto promised, smiling up at her, a complicated feeling turning in his stomach. He wasn't too keen on books, but Tenten said this was her favourite, but it was also a kids' book. He knew she wasn't making fun of him, that wasn't Tenten's style. But it still stung a little to know that she didn't think he could read any better than a kid.

Well then, he was just going to have to read _everything_ , and get super super good and show her how awesome he was at reading then.

Goal in mind, when Naruto got back to his flat that night, he made his dinner according to the recipe that Gai-sensei wrote for him, ate it, showered, threw his stanky training clothes in to be washed, made some tea, and sat on his bed to read the simple childrens' book. He was going to read _all_ of it, and tell Tenten exactly what he thought about it tomorrow morning.

He was completely absorbed within two pages, his tea forgotten. Then later cold and untouched by the time he was finished, blinking owlishly as he closed the little book and glanced around at his strangely dark flat.

"...What?" he rasped bewildered as he looked around, and then down at his clock. Midnight.

Oh crap! That meant he only had five hours to sleep before he had to be up for Gai-sensei's morning training!

He quickly scrambled out of bed to put the little book in his kunai-pouch so he wouldn't forget it, dumped his cold tea down the sink, and climbed into bed – only to have to climb back out a second later to brush his teeth and take his glasses off. He was still getting the hang of the glasses thing.

And if his dreams happened to be filled of a blue haired kunoichi and a book that let her read everyone's minds, that let her steal legendary weapons from their wielders and know how to use them, to learn Ninjutsu with just a single peek at a page, and stand against a Kage that terrified her to protect her village, then he would say he had good dreams indeed. And would never tell a single soul exactly what they were.

The next morning, he was a _teensy_ bit late to meet with Gai-sensei and had to do an extra hundred push-ups as a penalty game, but he didn't mind. He had _plans_. In their breakfast break he was going to go and raid the bookshop for a book on beginner fuuinjutsu, and something on trap making. The Shinobi, Negi, in Nodoka was very good with traps, and he combined it with basic ninjutsu into techniques that could take down A and S-ranked ninja. Naruto wanted to be able to do them too, because a lot of them sounded a lot like his old pranks, but if he changed things up and used poison instead of chalk-dust then he would be a ninja instead of a pain in the ass.

Tenten was still giving Neji the cold shoulder, and while Naruto was very wary around him he tried to be professional. It was important that _he_ wasn't the one to ruin their team dynamic, because undoubtedly there would be someone higher up on the chain of command only too eager to pin him down as a troublemaker and have him reassigned. Like they had when he and Neji got into their knock-down drag-out fight when he clipped Tenten's lung with his dumb slap-fu (he knew what it was called, but 'gentle fist' sounded dumb, at least slap-fu was appropriate, though Neji had begun to use it with his fingertips lately after Naruto said it to his face, now it was poke-fu, and poke-fu _hurt_ ). Gai-sensei never said anything, but Naruto picked up gossip unlike anyone else did in his graduating class, he heard. He also knew that Gai-sensei had put his career on the line to stick up for him after that, hence why he was trying _really_ hard not to take Neji's behaviour personally. If the painfully wide grins and stifled manly tears Gai-sensei sometimes tried to hide were any indication, Naruto could assume the man appreciated his efforts. That alone was enough.

Even if Neji was still a _bastard_.

Sasuke could go suck an egg in terms of being an icy pre-Madara, Neji had him beat thirteen ways to Thursday.

So, before either of his teammates showed up, Naruto made his quick book run. Darting under the arm of a silver haired Jounin in regulation-fatigues as he was leaving the shop, he quickly scanned the signs hanging from the ceiling. Reference texts were at the back, so that was where he went. Geography texts, cookery, plants, animals, trees, economics, history (censored and edited), back-dated Bingo books, pottery, ink painting, book binding, calligraphy – ah-hah! ' _A Beginner's Guide to Fuuinjutsu_ ' by U. Mi, a plain green and yellow book with a purple triangle set on the cover much like Tenten's Nodoka story had the book.

Not long later, a rather aged book titled ' _Traps and Trappings_ ' by a Se. Tobi was added to Naruto's little pile of books (the fuuinjutsu volume had been joined by a book on plants, an old bingo book from the Third Great Shinobi war, the one that the Yondaime earned his flee on site order in, and a book on chakra control techniques that he thought Tenten might be interested in). It was as he was gathering them all up to take to the counter that a bright little book, shoved in upside down amongst the Iwa bingo book copies caught his eye.

' _The Legend of the Utterly Gutsy Shinobi_ '?

He flipped it over to get a look at the back and froze when he saw his own name leering up at him from the blurb.

The main character had the same name as him.

 _He had to buy this book_.

So he did.

All together the books cost him just over half of his savings, but it was money well spent in Naruto's opinion as he raced back to Training Ground Three with his spoils just as Tenten arrived, Neji already present and going through warm up stretches while Gai-sensei did one-fingered handstand push-ups. He returned the Nodoka book to Tenten, and told her about his favourite parts as she began her own warm-up stretches and Naruto settled in to continue the chakra control exercise he had the most difficulty with. It wasn't that he couldn't do it, it was just that it was the hardest for him, so he made sure to keep practising it because it actually _helped_ his control the most.

Both morning and afternoons on Saturdays were dedicated to Chakra control, with the evenings set aside for self-study, Naruto intended to use that slot for his fuuinjutsu and trap-making. He would take a quick peek through his bingo book at lunch, to see if he couldn't find the Yondaime in there. He stopped chatting when Gai-sensei flipped to his feet and struck a pose, as was his way of gaining their attention. For the rest of the morning, while Neji and Tenten took their first faltering steps in water walking, Naruto focused on the leaf sticking exercise. Water walking required a little more control than tree walking, and Naruto... Wasn't a strong swimmer. Mizuki-sensei never seemed to notice when he struggled, and the blond was too embarrassed to ask for help, so he didn't particularly want to take a dunk in front of his team. He would try in the afternoon, or when he managed to stick a leaf to every finger AND his forehead successfully.

The entirety of Team Three was sopping wet by the time they set down for Self Study in the evening. Gai-sensei offered them all green jumpsuits like his, warm and dry, and while Tenten and Neji refused, Naruto hated being wet and cold, so he quite gratefully accepted the gift and got change behind some bushes. Tenten acted like he was a dying man when he stepped out, and the usually restrained expression of disgust on Neji's face was no longer so restrained. Naruto shrugged, he didn't care, this thing was warm and dry.

"How can you wear thaaat?" Ten-chan moaned in disbelief, staring at him with much the same expression as Shikamaru had when Sasuke's fangirls descended upon him.

Naruto stuck his tongue out, "How can you wear _that_?" he retorted, "It's soaking wet."

Tenten shrugged, "It'll dry, but the green will forever be BURNT into my memories!"

Naruto stuck his tongue out as he dragged his bag of books over, "I don't like being cold, or wet. I'll take the green over both, thanks," he declared defensively as he pulled his little stack out and considered them. He hadn't had a chance to read during lunch, he'd bolted his food down and gone straight back to the leaf sticking exercise – he had been SO close! Another ten minutes rewarded him with success – success that saw Tenten cheerfully ploughing him into the lake with a shout of challenge. Naruto swore at her, and got dunked again for his efforts. He was still wobbly on water walking, but he could do it. About as gracefully as a toddler, but he could do it.

He tried not to let the fact that Neji was already capable of performing katas for his stupid poke-fu on the water affect him.

He wasn't very successful.

Tenten tried to dunk Neji upon seeing Naruto's facial expression, but she wasn't very effective - instead she and Neji got into a weird kind of spar on the water, because even though he could perform katas, Neji wasn't actually able to fight yet. Tenten neither, but she had a lot of kunai and shuriken, and the intelligence not to let Neji get in close. It was fun to watch, and Neji was even smiling by the end of it. It was the first time either of them had seen it, and after a second of startled staring, they just grinned and laughed. Neji looked good with a smile.

Pointedly, Naruto opened up his book on trap making, nudged his glasses back up his nose, and started reading. One finger under the kanji so he wouldn't lose his place as he mouthed along to the words.

Say what you wanted to about Se. Tobi's writing ability, the ninja in question was an absolute _genius_. Naruto didn't doubt the book's lack of popularity stemmed entirely from the dry, almost bland way it was written it came with a host of, at first, very flat and boring black and white mathematical diagrams of traps that the blond _would_ have completely dismissed – if he hadn't seen a single segment that he had used himself, once upon a time ago, when rigging an ANBU locker to burst confetti and glitter onto the hapless owner when opened. With that in mind, he looked over the diagrams again with new eyes, and a growing appreciation that bordered on fanatical _fanboyism_.

Naruto had always loved pranks. As a ninja, pranks were for kids, and were considered shameful for a Shinobi of Konoha to be performing. But **traps**? Traps which were, in essence, just an grown up's form of pranking with more lethal consequences than a red face and a night scrubbing your clothes in the sink?

 _Sign him the fuck up_.

"Naruto-kun, have you been here all night?" he heard Gai-sensei boom next to his ear.

The blond jerked, flailing wildly as he was so cruelly torn from his reverent study of the Northern Dragon's Web, a wire technique that when triggered caught fire and wrapped around its unwary victim, just like the sinewy form of a dragon, completely engulfing them while acting as a massive signal flare.

"Eh, eh? Gai-sensei? Didn't you go home?" Naruto asked squinting at him suspiciously before he was suddenly on his feet, "Gai-sensei! You have to read this! You have to! It's _amazing_! Books are amazing!" he gushed excitedly, practically shoving his trap-making book under the Taijutsu specialist's nose. "It explains so much, and I don't get called dumb for not knowing the answer! This guy! This guy, Se. Tobi, he's a genius! An absolute genius and I need everything he's ever written ever, Gai-sensei! I need more books!" the blond gushed, waving the book around some more before turning to leer at the village thoughtfully, "I need more book _cases_! And a new flat, mine's way too small – no, a house! I need a house – with a library! Next to a library? Is it legal to live in a library? Gai-sensei, can I live in a library?"

The Jounin could only laugh.

"Gai-sensei! This is _important!_ " the blond protested loudly, genuinely offended that the man would take such amusement in his decision. "I need to learn as many powerful Jutsus as possible if I'm gunna be Hokage! That means reading and libraries! I need a library! I need D-ranks to buy more books, and bookcases to put them on, _and then_ the library to put them _in_!"

The Taijutsu specialist coughed, and straightened up seriously, though the very faint quiver of his lips gave him away to Naruto's newly attuned vision, "My apologies Naruto-kun, your enthusiasm for the written word is most admirable!" the Jounin boomed approvingly, unable to help himself from striking another pose. "However, libraries are not fit for human habitation! Konoha has many youthful laws on the standards that a residential domicile must adhere to for one of her citizens to call it home! While I admire your Fires of Youth, Naruto-kun, houses are prohibitively expensive at this early stage of your Springtime of Youth! It would take no less than four A-rank missions to afford a house of your own within Konoha's residential district!"

He ran the numbers quickly, "I can do that," Naruto announced intensely, glaring at his feet as he thought _hard_ , hard enough for an ache to start up behind his eyes but that _didn't matter because -_ "We've cleared the minimum requirements for a C-rank mission already. It'll take four C-rank missions before we're cleared for a B-rank mission, and seven B-ranks before we can sign on for an A-rank mission!" he declared with an excited whoop, cheering as he jumped up in the air, and immediately began to try and tug the Taijutsu specialist to the Hokage tower, "What are you standing around for Sensei? We need to get to the mission office! If we work hard, we can get up to A-ranks within a year! Gai-sensei! We need to _hurry_ before all the good missions are _gone!_ "

He couldn't help it, Gai started laughing again. He had been blessed with the most Youthful Team in Konoha!

 _ **000**_

"I too have felt it is our fate to advance a little faster," Neji admitted after a healthy amount of time staring sceptically at Naruto when the blond babbled his intentions to get a house with a library to Tenten and how he needed their help to get up to A-rank missions within the year. The Uzumaki had been left to explain his intentions to his team while Gai-sensei ran after a silver haired Jounin in the distance, bellowing about rivals and eternity, etc. They wished the strange Jounin luck.

"So we're agreed?" Tenten asked as she wiped her hands, "We ask for a C-rank?"

Naruto grunted in agreement from where he was doing push ups, blinking away sweat as it dribbled from his forehead.

"MY YOUTHFUL STUDENTS!" Sensei suddenly bellowed, appearing in the middle of them.

Tenten squealed and stumbled backwards, she tripped over Naruto which sent him crashing to the ground, and grabbed Neji in the process. The resulting pile of genin groaned, Naruto hissing a curse about where he could shove his youthfulness that Tenten and Neji heartily agreed with as they untangled themselves. Gai-sensei beamed down at them, patiently waiting for the three pre-teens to get to their feet and line up in front of him, and his somewhat beleaguered looking guest, that self-same silver haired Jounin from earlier, looking decidedly unimpressed by all of them.

Naruto squinted at him sceptically. One eye. Silver hair. Orange book – he knew what that book was!

"Ahhh! Pervert!" he yelled loudly, pointing at the new Jounin. "He's got one of those gross perv books!"

The man cast a look in Gai's direction, and the Taijutsu specialist laughed heartily, "This, my most youthful Konoha Saplings, is my Eternal Rival, Hatake Kakashi, Ninjutsu specialist extraordinaire! I have asked for his most youthful efforts in assisting me. His Ninjutsu repertoire is vast, and I'm sure there's something for everyone in there, if only they're willing to learn!" he exclaimed cheerfully.

"You – got someone to teach us Ninjutsu?" Tenten asked in shock. It was practically unheard of for Jounin to allow anyone else to share techniques, or teach, their Genin _anything_. They knew Gai-sensei was a bit fruity, but they hadn't thought he was so maverick as to break one of the unspoken rules of Ninja instruction, which was to jealously guard one's students, even to their detriment.

"Indeed, my Youthful Konoha Blossom!" their teacher declared, striking another pose while the Jounin next to him clearly rolled his eyes and tucked his nose back into his pervert book with disinterest. Naruto bristled at the blatant disrespect this guy was showing to Gai-sensei who had been nothing but _awesome_ to them. "As we are to leave the village on our first C-rank later next week, I felt it prudent to ensure my Precious Konoha Saplings had some extra skills on which to fall back! And as Kakashi-kun has _lost_ our latest Youthful Challenge, he must teach my precious students at least _one_ Ninjutsu technique!"

Tenten sparkled with excitement, "To learn from the famed Copy Nin himself!" she squeed a little, ignorant to the faint expression of discomfort that distorted the tiny visible patch of face the man had. "Can you teach me Medical Ninjutsu?" she demanded intently, "I've been practising my Chakra Control _constantly_ , I think I can do it! Please!"

Neji shifted, his expression a shaded faintly with discomfort, "Ninjutsu is not... seemly for Hyuuga Ninja," he objected quietly.

Gai-sensei stared at him for a moment before beaming and flashing him a thumbs up, "Neji-kun, walk with me a moment. Kakashi-kun, I leave my most Youthful Students in your care!" their teacher declared happily before moving off, placing a hand on Neji's shoulder and steering him off along with him.

Naruto watched them go with conflicted feelings.

Ninjutsu wasn't _seemly_ for Hyuuga? What was that about? He knew Neji was from a fairly big and stuffy clan, but, what kind of Ninja clan wasn't okay with its people learning Ninjutsu? What about the Academy three they had to learn, or the supplementary techniques that required chakra manipulation to do properly? Even Chakra Control techniques could be used offensively with some imagination, that was why they fell under the Ninjutsu category even today (the last person to make a combat style solely out of supplementary/chakra control Ninjutsu had been Senju Touka, the Shodai and Nidaime's left hand, and the _first_ ANBU Captain, she had been _beastly_ , just like her cousins).

"Well," the silver haired Jounin announced, closing his dirty book with a soft _fwip_ of pages, "I imagine this will go a little faster with some one-on-one training," he decided, crossing his fingers in a plus sign, it was no hand-seal Naruto had seen, and a moment later a _second_ Hatake Kakashi was stood next to the first.

"Mitsutoshi-chan, this way. We'll see about teaching you a little something," the one that puffed to the left of the man decided, gesturing her onwards to one side, still within the same clearing, but just far enough that she and Naruto wouldn't be tripping over each other.

Naruto squinted at the guy and then glanced over to Tenten, and then back the way that Neji had been lead off in. Not seemly. That was going to bug him now, he could tell.

"Now, Uzumaki-kun, Gai tells me you have huge Chakra reserves, but poor control despite constant and dedicated efforts to improve it. Not unsurprising, if you truly are of Uzumaki blood, then they're somewhat known for it," the silver haired Jounin mused lazily, snapping the blond's attention back to him, and successfully keeping hold of it. "With that in mind, it's no surprise that Bunshin is your weakest technique, however, it is a staple, and you would do well to have at least one Clone technique under your belt." He sighed deeply in much the same way Shikamaru would before saying something was troublesome. Naruto automatically bristled at the implied insult the man didn't say.

"If you don't want to teach me, you don't have to," he grit out angrily, "I can read, I'll find my own Ninjutsu to learn."

There was a momentary look of surprise (and a flicker of uncertainty) on the man's face before he shook his head slowly, "No. Gai is a friend. You don't have the control for an Elemental Clone, and you have too much Chakra for an illusionary one. I'm going to teach you the Kage Bunshin, the Shadow Clone. A solid clone able to use Chakra, and share memories with its caster," the Jounin explained slowly.

Slowly, Naruto wound down, shifting his weight into something less defensive.

The Jounin nodded, and arranged his hands, "As you've probably noticed already from earlier, Kage Bunshin uses a different hand-seal to the standard Academy taught ones..."

 _ **0000**_

 **End chapter. I had no idea how to finish this, so Kakashi showed up. Naruto needs to learn Kage Bunshin, it's legitimately his trademark Ninjutsu, and he'll definitely need it for his first C-rank, because I laugh at the C-rank curse and have every intention of using it.**


	5. Chapter 5

Accidents happen, and sometimes by design. Naruto was determined to become a Genin, it was just his luck that this year they were being tested in the Kawarimi instead of the Bunshin due to a single lazy Admin-chuunin. Team Gai!Naruto, Maito!Lee (adoption yay), BAMF!everyone.

 _ **000**_

 **Chapter Five**

Kami save him from fangirls.

Not that Gai's little kunoichi was that bad in all honesty, her fangirlism seemed to be closer to the idolatry one would have to a highly respected senpai of their chosen field. And oh boy did she respect Tsunade-sama. Enough to be upset to the point of tears when after almost two hours of effort, carefully regulating her chakra use, when he told her that Medical Ninjutsu was just out of her reach. She didn't have the chakra control for it, nor the finesse.

And of course, typical to his luck, that was the moment that Gai chose to return with his broody Hyuuga student in tow, freezing at the sight of his female student plastered with the remains of exploded fish, crying her eyes out, with Kakashi stood over her.

In all fairness, Gai had walked in on Kakashi at worse scenes.

But this was his precious student. And when Kakashi said _**precious**_ he really damn meant it. The Taijutsu specialist was an inch away from adding the three to the Maito Clan archives the last time he and Kakashi went out and got plastered at the Rusty Kunai, it took some concentrated efforts on Genma and Raido's parts to stop him while Kakashi sat back and watched the doton wreck with amusement. He didn't think his friend would turn _violent_ , but he was well aware that Gai's cold shoulder could be unexpectedly unpleasant – he had only suffered through the taijutsu specialist's displeasure a total of three times in his life, he wasn't especially keen to have a repeat performance, _buuut_ the brief flash of dark accusation in his friend's charcoal eyes more than assured Kakashi he was about to receive it again.

Bugger.

Sighing slowly in awkward frustration, the clone rummaged a field dressing from his pocket, pretty much the only cloth-like thing he had on his person, and kind of... tossed it into the young Kunoichi's lap. No one liked sitting in exploded fish.

He was a Jounin of the Leaf, the Copy Nin, Man of a Thousand Jutsus, he did _not_ flinch when the girl hiccupped wetly at his offering. And he most certainly didn't _cringe_ away from Gai when the taijutsu specialist brushed past him to kneel in front of the girl – her Hyuuga teammate looking disturbed in their sensei's wake as he stared at the bun headed girl as if she were some form of alien life-form. Clearly she wasn't much of a crier. Gai got lucky. The Hyuuga then turned _furious_ and accusatory eyes onto the Hatake, as if he would have liked nothing more than to attack him for upsetting the girl, a crush perhaps? Or just general Hyuuga possessiveness over teammates? Hard to tell.

The clone grimaced and decided to _prudently_ dismiss himself – or would have had Gai's hand not snapped backwards, without looking, and grabbed his wrist firmly. The clone froze for a breath when the taijutsu specialist shot him a look over his shoulder. The message was very clear. He debated dispelling anyway, it would give the original Kakashi enough of a warning to high-tail it from the clearing, but... He settled down to wait it out.

The repercussions for ditching Gai now would be... he was one of the few friends Kakashi still had, his one support left after his world crumbled again, and again, and again, leaving him floundering in darkness – at least until the obnoxious light reflecting from his friend's teeth guided him back. Gai had entrusted him with teaching his students, practically his children, because Kami damn well knew that the man had no interest in the female form beyond to check it for musculature, and likewise held no interest in men. He never seemed to have the same growing pains as the rest of them, inappropriate crushes and messy complicated relationships growing up. He seemed to be completely asexual. Kakashi had messed up already, leaving without even trying to either fix the mess or answer to his friend would ensure a very uncomfortable year for their friendship.

"Neji-kun, could you fetch Ten-chan some water to help her clean up while I speak with Kakashi?" the taijutsu specialist asked his student, making the clone grimace a little at his use of wording. His name, not 'my eternal rival', or 'my comrade'. He was most _definitely_ in the dog house right now.

"Yes, Sensei," the boy grit out, still glaring at Kakashi with outright hostility that the green clad Jounin did not try to reprimand him for. Kakashi did not try to speak, Gai would merely glare him into silence until they were alone and he could demand answers himself.

He refrained from sighing, but only just. Why the hell did Hokage-sama have to pull him out of ANBU?

At least when he was murdering people he didn't have to deal with crying children.

 _ **000**_

Glasses.

Who knew glasses could make _such_ a difference to his face? _ **(he resolutely did not think of the green jumpsuit. It did not exist. Naruto was not wearing it.)**_

Kakashi could look clearly into those cerulean coloured eyes without flinching, without feeling the visceral pain of his insides being _torn_ from his chest, leaving him breathless and aching, as if there were a lump in his throat and a hole in his heart. Such a tiny little thing, a pair of red framed glasses, but they divorced the young Jinchuuriki's face just enough from the ghosts of his past that Kakashi could look at him and _see_ him, instead of the dead sins that weighed upon his conscience.

At least until the boy opened his mouth, and _Kushina_ was shouting about how awesome her jutsus are.

He tried not to twitch too noticeably. And with how excited the boy and his _plethora_ of clones were, he didn't think they noticed thankfully. It... was nice, he supposed, to know that something of the Uzumaki combat style lived on, it was through them that the various hard-clone techniques were created as their chakra stores were the largest of all known clans. They were developed as _chakra control techniques_ Minato-sensei had confided to him one evening in tones of mixed admiration and horror. Kage Bunshin was the watered down form of an Uzumaki clone technique taught to children to half their chakra stores so they could at least make the beginning steps of learning control. He would have to write everything he could remember down about how best to train with Uzumaki for Gai to use at a later date, perhaps suggest he approach the Hokage for advice – Sarutobi had been alive for not only Kushina's genin days, but also Tsunade, and Nawaki. Utatane Koharu would be the best to ask for advice, as the woman had been Kushina's Sensei, but her tolerance for Gai's ways, and the frosty treatment she bestowed onto Naruto himself, made Kakashi wary of suggesting her involvement.

"You picked that up very quickly," Kakashi praised lazily, the lines of his face relaxing slightly when the blond turned a beaming grin up at him that was all Kushina, and yet just different enough that he didn't have to swallow down a flinch.

And then Naruto's face fell.

"TEN-CHAN!" he yelled, and all eight of both himself and his clones rampaged past Kakashi straight to their female teammate who – was plastered head to foot in fishguts, crying her eyes out, and with Kakashi's clone looking very awkward next to a furious and hiding it Gai.

Oh hell, Kakashi wondered if he could make a break for it but made the mistake of meeting Gai's eyes. Attempting to escape would not end well, for him.

All eight Narutos fluttered around her like a swarm, cloths and waterbottles were produced from pockets and the girl was quickly cleaned up while what Kakashi could only assume was the real Naruto hugged her to his shoulder as she cried. Gai left them too it and walked a few paces away to glare at the Dog Summoner's clone, clearly demanding answers.

Wary and somewhat concerned himself, Kakashi shuffled over.

"She doesn't have the ability to become a Medic Nin," his clone stated stiffly, highly uncomfortable. Gai stared at him grimly for long enough that the clone started to physically squirm, which was no mean feat. "She has the dedication and the Fuuinjutsu knowledge, but her Chakra control just isn't good enough. Her Chakra reserves are powerful and growing rapidly with the onset of puberty. If she ever wanted to become a Medic Nin, she would have to wait until her twenties before beginning training, and even then she won't be able to perform anything more than the most basic of techniques."

Kakashi rubbed his face, "And so she started crying when you told her"

His clone nodded, relaxing a little before Gai sighed deeply and rubbed his face in an echo of Kakashi's own gesture.

"You never were the best with words, Rival," he pointed out in exhaustion. Both making Kakashi feel bad, but relieved. Gai was upset, but he wasn't going to be giving him the cold shoulder.

"Or women," he agreed apologetically, making the Azure Beast suppress a snort before he gestured to the clone, allowing it to dispel with relief and – Kakashi winced as the memories of the training session sank in.

When the two came back, they could hear Tenten sobbing out the story to Naruto who was looking increasingly confused along with all of his clones, the eight of them exchanging glances and muttering as they gestured to one another.

"But, Ten-chan, you don't _need_ Medical Ninjutsu to be a kickass medic!" one of the clones pointed out.

The girl sniffled and looked up from Naruto's shoulder as the others began to noisily agree, "Yeah! Tsunade-sama invented medical Ninjutsu, but what were they using before she was born? Back in the Warring Clans era?"

"I mean, Ijutsu is super useful and awesome, but it isn't all there is!"

"If you wanna be a medic we can help you study!"

"Yeah! Yeah! We can learn all about surgery!"

"Battlefield medic!"

The two Jounin exchanged glances, Kakashi's outright stunned, while Gai's was warm and beaming and proud, as Tenten laughed wetly surrounded by hyperactive blonds who were rapidly exclaiming about straight medical techniques, no chakra required. Then they started listing books and supplies that they would need, and Tenten roughly wiped her eyes, taking a deep breath and got in on the conversation, protesting a few and agreeing on others. Her shoulders straightening the longer they spoke until her grin was just as fierce and determined as before, if not more so.

"You have a good team," Kakashi observed quietly.

"That I do."

 _ **000**_

With Tenten's aspirations of learning Ijutsu dashed, she instead demanded to learn an Elemental Ninjutsu from Kakashi, if he was still willing to teach her something after that embarrassing and frankly unacceptable break down of hysterics. And with eight near-feral Naruto's behind her, glaring at him and fingering kunai pouches, Kakashi wasn't about to say no, not that he would have anyway. The fact that she had her break, and then pulled herself back up, and chose a different path to obtain her goal was admirable.

He taught her Doton: Doro Gaeshi, the Mud Overturn technique. Only a C-rank but it was a surprisingly useful one, that Kakashi had learned and extensively used in the last Shinobi War. For a close quarters combat team like Team Gai, having at least _one_ member able to raise a defensive wall for them all to hide behind in the event of massive area effect Ninjutsu would be useful.

"And if you're planning on doing Battlefield Surgery, you're going to need something to shield yourself and your patient while you work," he added with a friendly eyesmile at the surprised look on the girl's face. One that narrowed into a fierce grin of determination.

"Got it, Kakashi-sensei!" she exclaimed, saluting him before turning on heel and _throwing_ herself into training and perfecting the technique.

For Neji, once Gai managed to talk him out of whatever bullshit the Hyuuga had been feeding him, received Raiton: Hanabi, essentially a flash-tag technique that used lightning to blind everyone near-by. As a Hyuuga it would be ineffective against him, and allow him to get in close to his enemies or give his teammates the opportunity to get out of a hairy spot. It was clear the young genius was reluctant to learn Ninjutsu, but he did so with the same degree of dedication and genius as everything else, managing to master the basics of the technique by the end of the day, creating a startling flash of light that could easily disorientate the unsuspecting.

As for Naruto, as soon as he realised the memory transfer effects of his Kage Bunshin, raided the nearest library.

Kakashi was honestly terrified for the future of Konoha now that he had witnessed the small sea of blonds sprawled out across the training ground, each with a book in hand, or discussing what was in the books in their hands. Gai looked on at the waiting apocalypse and cried manly tears of joy over how Youthful his students were. Kakashi wondered if the Rusty Kunai was open and if Genma was in there, because he needed a drink, and someone to rant at. The world was clearly doomed, and only he could see it. The only thing that saved them in Kushina's time was that her interest in reading was solely smut, the rest of the time she enjoyed punching things more than reading about the things she planned to punch. But apparently Naruto had stumbled on that ancient trap-making book written by the Second Hokage himself (Kakashi could have sworn they were REMOVED from general circulation after the Uchiha Military Police encountered too many children with missing limbs!), and fallen in love with the written word – after being incapable of reading for so many years, it was like suddenly the gates of knowledge were open to him and all those things he hadn't known were being handed to him on printed sheets of paper bound in leather.

...Okay, he could see Naruto's enchantment with the concept.

It did not mean he appreciated it.

"You've done well, my Youthful Students!" Gai exclaimed proudly, clapping his hands together and effortlessly gaining the attention of the three pre-teens. It was a little gratifying, and horrifying, for Kakashi to see the degree of respect the three showed his bestfriend. "Tomorrow we'll meet at the Mission Office after morning conditioning and get our first C-rank mission. Tonight, _dinner's on me!_ "

"YES!" Tenten screeched, throwing her arms in the air, "Can we get barbecue Sensei?! The Akimichi Grill House does All You Can Eat specials tonight!"

"Aww, but ramen!" was the predictable, if strangely subdued, complaint from Naruto.

"Can it, Whiskers! We had ramen _last_ time Sensei treated us! My turn to pick!" the girl roared, shaking a fist at her teammate who hunched up and buried his nose back in his book. Neji was very pointedly staying out of the argument, a small bead of sweat forming on his cheek. Clearly Tenten was a girl who was serious about her food, Kakashi chuckled a little in surprise, well, it certainly explained why she had more muscle than her kunoichi peers. A lot of young girls took it into their heads that they needed to diet in order to become beautiful and successful kunoichi, never realising that because they had such exceptionally active lifestyles that their carb-pinching was actually causing them both damage and the opposite effect. A body placed under starvation conditions would do everything possible to retain energy, like consume muscle – rendering their training efforts moot.

"Yosh! Barbecue it is!" Gai exclaimed, before turning a beaming grin onto him, "Care to join us, my Eternal Rival?"

He was going to refuse, but then the little kunoichi turned bright eyes onto him, "Please! I want to ask you more about Doton release techniques!" she pleaded and, well, dedicated little kunoichi looking for guidance from her senpai, it would be remiss of him to refuse her. And he still felt kind of guilty for making her cry earlier. Plus, free food. He couldn't really see a reason _not_ to.

"Alright."

It didn't take long to wrangle everyone and everything into some order, getting Naruto to put down his books took the bulk of their time. They left the clones to their reading, and in the end, fed up with Naruto's "I'm almost finished with this page", Tenten physically picked him up and swung him onto her back. Startled, Naruto eventually shrugged and returned to his reading, and decided to tell her about Storage Seals.

"– via chakra matrix," Naruto explained happily, book resting between Tenten's hairbuns as she piggybacked him through the village. Neji was pretending he didn't know any of them, Gai was gushing about youthful training opportunities and trying to get Kakashi to do the same – Kami help him, he was considering it because being able to read Icha Icha while someone else carried him would be awesome. However he also knew Gai had a well hidden utterly wicked sense of humour and knew he would end up having his head bashed into every low-hanging branch, sign, and awning if he dared read smut while the Taijutsu specialist was carrying him.

"Is that what supports the time/space ninjutsu?" Tenten asked curiously as they made their way onto the main highstreet and past a group of Academy students.

"Yep," Naruto agreed, "The four directional matrix-arrays anchor a kind of miniature pocket dimension onto the paper, size is constricted to the amount of Chakra put into the arrays, and if you pour too much in it can overload them and set fire to your paper. Vellum and animal based parchment makes for the best sealing paper because it allows for better Chakra absorption," the blond lectured enthusiastically as he flipped through a few more pages in his book. "If you can't get hold of that, Katon-coal ink is your next best port of call."

"I have a _ton_ of that at the forge!" the brunette burst excitedly, "Is there anything about making ink in there?"

"No. But I read about how to do it yesterday," Naruto enthused, "It'll take some doing, but I can probably make a pot if you wanna give Explosive Tags a try!"

Kakashi coughed politely, "No making Explosive Tags without supervision from at _least_ a Chuunin specialist, kiddies. Konoha Law," he rebuked gently, Gai was far too busy now attempting to talk Neji into riding on his back while the Hyuuga looked as though he would have paid for a Kumo nin to abduct him right then and there off the street than deal with his sensei right now.

The twin whines of dismay shouldn't have been as adorable as they were.

Neji grimaced, glancing over his shoulder, the Academy students were still watching them go like a Doton Jutsu about to destroy a small village, their eyes wide with horror. Wonderful. Just what he always wanted, to be associated with these people in _public_. The pink haired girl exchanged a look with the Yamanaka heiress who looked as though she had paled three shades, and Neji sniffed, turning away from the children with a grimace as Gai-sensei _pranced_ around them, _loudly_.

Thank Kami the restaurant wasn't too far away.

The small group filtered in, and were seated. Naruto was still nose-deep in his book, explaining Fuuinjutsu theory to Tenten who was practically hanging on his every word, as if she couldn't have just read the book herself. Neji rolled his eyes and thanked the waitress as she passed out menus.

"Ahem? May we have one more menu, you missed someone," Gai-sensei declared with a beaming smile that... it was strained?

"It's fine," Naruto grunted, not bothering to look up from his book, "I'll share Tenten's menu."

Neji frowned. Had Naruto even looked up from his book to _realise_ the waitress hadn't given him a menu?

"Don't need it!" the bun-haired girl proclaimed, she was on her feet, waving an arm to the waitress who had paused several paces away from their table looking torn between offended and nervous. "We'll have five of the All You Can Eat specials!" she declared loudly with a bubbly grin.

"Can I have mango juice, please?" Naruto requested, not looking up.

"Yoshaaa! Ginger beer for me, please!" Gai exclaimed.

"Just a jug of water," Kakashi requested, hand lifted politely.

"Water is fine," Neji agreed as he scanned the menu with swift eyes, "A bowl of plain rice as well please."

"Y-yes, of course," the waitress managed to get out as she wrote everything down and quickly bustled her way back to the kitchen with a nervous glance over her shoulder.

Naruto sighed and closed his book, tucking it into his pouch, he looked resigned, like he would have rather been anywhere but here, which was odd as far as Neji was concerned. Usually the blond loved it when they got free food, and in the short time they had been a team, it had been either Gai-sensei getting take out and bringing it to them, cooking it himself, or they went to Ichiraku Ramen.

"So, you were saying about purposefully overloading chakra matrices in Barrier Fuuinjutsu, and how that correlates into undoing blood-locked Storage Seals?" Kakashi prompted as he tugged his own book out and hid the lower half of his already hidden face behind it.

Neji grimaced as the blond relaxed a little and began to babble about Fuuinjutsu again. No doubt quoting some book verbatim. When he had first met his team, it had been easy to see Tenten was a steady and reliable kunoichi cut above her peers, and the blond as a loud annoyingly stubborn menace and shame to the name of Shinobi. Just over a month into being teammates, he _still_ thought that, but now he had also added unobservant, ignorant, hyper-focused, hyper- _active_ , and arrogant to the list. How did one go their entire life without realising they needed glasses? Having eye-sight _that_ bad and _still_ managing to bumble their way through existence and have the appalling lack of braincells to believe they could make it as a Shinobi. If there was perhaps one thing about Uzumaki Naruto that Neji could admire, it was his complete _blind ignorance_.

To be so stupid that you could not even identify your own idiocy must have been a special kind of bliss.

 _ **0000**_

 **And another chapter done~**

 **Next Chapter will have our lovely C-rank curse where everything goes just a little bit tits up in the best kind of way XDDD Stay tuned.**

 **I also have good news, I move house in a month – we managed to find a place before we were made homeless, which is great XDD Updates might be a bit slow with that in mind, also, I went back and corrected the book-author issues in the last chapter.**


	6. Chapter 6

Accidents happen, and sometimes by design. Naruto was determined to become a Genin, it was just his luck that this year they were being tested in the Kawarimi instead of the Bunshin due to a single lazy Admin-chuunin. Team Gai!Naruto, Maito!Lee (adoption yay), BAMF!everyone.

 _Pairings are up in the air at the moment, I'm torn between making this completely Gen with only background pairings, or having it a Neji/Naruto (after a fuck ton of character development)._

 _ **000**_

 **Chapter Six**

Their client was Nobuyuki Akira, an old man who owned a farm just outside Tanzaku Gai. He was having difficulties with his crops getting stolen clean out of the field by thugs who vandalised what was left along with a great deal of the fencing and irrigation systems he had set up to keep things running in the far fields he couldn't get too very often. He was hardly a young man these days, and those little bastards were messing with his livelihood. He wanted them caught and brought to swift and exacting justice.

It was, essentially, a bandit clearing mission.

Gai was a little dubious about it, but the Hokage assured him it was an arrest mission, not a search and destroy one, which mollified the Taijutsu specialist enough to enthusiastically accept and usher them off with a list each of what to pack. No one would be sending fresh Genin out on blood missions, not in this day and age.

And, he probably wouldn't be allowed but, just in case, Naruto packed a book about plants and another one about irrigation systems in with the rest of his kit. If there was time, he might see about repairing the damage already done – that was good business practice, wasn't it? Doing little things that made their clients happier, it would encourage the old geezer to turn to Konoha more often. Well, he would _anyway_ , because Konoha was the best and it was near-by. But people had done weirder things before than go massively out of their way just to hire someone they had a better preference for.

They met at the gate where one of the Tanzaku militia was waiting to escort them to Nobuyuki's farm. Because of the thefts and vandalism the old man wasn't comfortable making the three day there-and-back journey to Konoha and leaving his farm untended, so he had thrown some ryo at one of the younger militia lads to run the mission request to Konoha for him.

"Yamada Takeshi," the young man greeted, grinning cheerfully under a mop of wild black spikes. He wore simple dark clothing in keeping with the old styles, a wide kasa, and had both a machete at his hip, and a spear in his hand, though he was using it as more of a walking stick than anything. "Hah, should've known Old Nobu was so tightfisted he hired a _Genin_ team," the youth, probably around twenty three years old, chuckled with a shake of his head as he grinned at them.

"My Youthful Students are more than up to the challenge!" Gai proclaimed, pumping his fists.

Yamada laughed again, "Oh I'm sure they are! I wasn't doubting them at all! Konoha trains their kiddies well," he praised, hands lifted defensively as he smiled at them. "The farm is a day and a half's walk, shall we get started? I hope you brought food, Nobu ain't gunna feed you, crotchety old fucker."

Tenten bounded up to Yamada's side as the group waved their goodbyes to the gate chuunin and began to make a move, "You don't sound too fond of Nobuyuki-san," she observed curiously, "What's the deal? Is there something we should be worried about?"

Yamada chuckled idly, ruffling her hair, "Not you so much, little missy. But old Nobu is a crotchety foul mouthed old bastard. I used to work for him back when I was your age. He was the type of guy who would work you to the bone, make you pay for your own meal, and then refuse to pay you for the work you'd done because you weren't fast enough to finish this other completely separate task he hadn't told you to do. Or your work was sloppy. Or he just didn't like the look of you, thought you looked shifty and thievey. He'd make you turn out your bags and pockets when you left too so there wasn't a chance to smuggle so much as an apple home. He likes to hit folk too. Got a knobbly old walking stick that's made its acquaintance with my spine more times than I care to remember. You three'd better watch your ankles, he'll avoid hitting the little lady here, but he'll lash out at you lot no problem. Especially you," he added nodding to Naruto who blinked up at him. "You've got those cute whiskers there. That means clan kid, but not one that's famous as Mister Hyuuga there, so he can hit you as hard as he likes and not worry about Clan Daddy sending someone to hover over his bed like a gargoyle."

Neji's face twisted into what had to have been the _ugliest_ expression Naruto had ever seen him wear thus far, even as he ducked his head forward, letting long brown hair swing forward to hide his face.

He was still frustratingly pretty even when he looked like he wanted to disembowel someone with his teeth. Must be that 'Noble Clan Breeding' he heard Ino bragging about in class as she leered at a bristling Sakura-chan, the two of them bickering and snipping at each other between bouts of mooning over Sasuke. He glanced at Tenten who pursed her lips and shook her head at him when she caught him looking at her in askance, both she and Gai-sensei seemed to have decided that Neji's family wasn't a good subject for him. Naruto didn't get it, his family were alive, and yeah they were stuffy assholes, but so was Neji so he fit right in. But either way, Tenten had given him strict instructions not to talk to Neji about the Hyuuga clan, bring them up, or ask him about them. He wanted to, but didn't know how to, and he didn't want to take one of those nasty Poke-fu's to the head or chest again. The hospital was boring as fuck.

Instead of addressing _that_ particular comment, Gai-sensei interrupted to ask about the bandit issue, Tenten falling back as the Jounin moved forward. This close to the village they didn't yet need to be in formation so they were fairly relaxed as they walked, it was actually a painful snail's pace as they were forced to travel at Yamada's speed, and by the end of the first hour, Naruto had pulled out one of his books and was reading as he walked.

Neji rolled his eyes, "It doesn't matter how much you read, you're still Fated to be – "

"I don't believe in Fate," the blond interrupted shortly, "Now shush, I want to concentrate."

Tenten snorted and burst out laughing at the look on the Hyuuga's face, clearly he had never encountered Naruto when he found a _new_ book with _new_ information in. "Don't worry about it Neji-kun," she giggled, twisting around her blond teammate to his otherside, "When he raided the library yesterday he found another trap making book. He gets like this when he finds books with information he hasn't read yet."

"He's a Deadlast," the brunet sneered with a scowl, "I doesn't matter how much he studies, he's Fated to always _be_ a Deadlast."

Tenten's smile dropped, "Well, that's your opinion, and you're entitled to it. Even when you're _wrong_ ," she sniffed before she returned to her former position on Naruto's other side. "Have you read a dictionary yet, Whiskers?" she asked curiously.

Naruto blushed a little, "Week after you lent me Nodoka. Not finished it yet, it's so _dry_. I'm kind of only using it to look up words I don't recognise now. Reading the whole thing isn't..."

"Interesting," the girl finished for him and laughed as he nodded.

Neji scoffed, "Why _bother_?" he demanded almost plaintively.

Naruto shrugged, returning to his book, shoulders hunching up defensively, "Because _everyone_ has always called me stupid, and deadlast, and made fun of me for not knowing things. They didn't stop to realise that I had to teach myself how to read because I didn't have parents to help, that I didn't have anyone teach me how to write, or count. I had to figure it out on my own _after_ I started the Academy by watching everyone _else_. I really _really_ tried in my first year. I wanted to be a Ninja so bad, I promised Jiji I would be good-as-gold. But they just ignored me, nothing was ever good enough. Even the Senseis would shout at me for not knowing things, call me stupid, deadlast. But, books don't shout at you for not knowing things. They just tell you what you want to know if you think to go looking for it. I never realised how awesome they were until I could actually _see_ what I was reading."

The Hyuuga sighed in aggravation, "It's still your Fate," he said as if Naruto was the one who was being unreasonable.

"Then Fate better come down here and say it to my face, so I can punch theirs in. I'm gunna be Hokage, damnit. Neither you, nor Fate are gunna stop me!" the blond snapped, closing his book and jogging on ahead to walk with Gai-sensei and Yamada-san.

Tenten sighed, "Well done, _Rookie of the Year_ ," she mocked, "Piss off the trap specialist, because that's a great idea in the middle of a mission."

Neji scoffed and ignored her, making the girl throw her hands up in frustration and stomp forward to join the others, complaining about how she couldn't be the only emotionally well-adjusted member of the team, that would just be unfair!

 _ **000**_

Naruto was seething, and he didn't know how to handle that. If he were back in Konoha it would be simple, go to a training ground and blow off some steam, go to Ichiraku and balm his temper with Teuchi-jiji and Ayame-chan's kindness, prank the living shit out of Neji's house or find a way to stick frog-spawn in his bento or down his back. But out here, on a mission, he was wound up with no out. He couldn't even focus enough to read his book. And he wasn't entirely a hundred percent sure _why_ he was so upset – he'd heard that kind of talk so much and so often it was like water off a duck's back when he was in the Academy. He could shout and rage and refuse to bow his head to the decisions others had made for them, and fight tooth and nail against their expectations, howl from the top of the monument about how he was going to be Hokage and none of them were going to stop him. But hearing Neji say that he was Fated to always remain a nothing, a deadlast, bottom of the barrel, pathetic and dumb... He couldn't just brush it off like he did them. It stung, it always did, but this was...

It wasn't _like_ a papercut. It was deeper.

It felt like there was salt in the wound, and that just pissed him off even more.

"It is because he should know better by now," Gai-sensei told him quietly as he sat down in front of the camp fire with him. Naruto twisted to look up at him. They had stopped to make camp just before it started getting dark, moving off the road a ways so the fire wouldn't draw any eyes. Everyone else was sleeping, Naruto was on first watch after he had trapped their little campsite to hell and back (probably taking a little bit of his frustration out in the process by rigging some truly unpleasant surprises), and Gai-sensei was going to take first and last watch with him and Neji while Tenten took middle of the night with Yamada-san.

"Gai-sensei?" he asked.

The jounin dropped a broad, rough hand onto Naruto's head and gently rubbed his hair, "You're upset because Neji-kun should know you better by now. He's seen how hard you work, and is aware of how badly you've been held back, and now how dedicated you've been in correcting that. He should know better because he knows _you_ in a way everyone else has not. That's why it hurts more," he explained kindly.

Naruto turned to stare into the fire, Gai-sensei's hand a warm weight upon his head as he turned that over in his mind. It... made sense, he guessed. Team Three was the closest he'd ever had to friends and family outside Jiji and Ichiraku...

"Yeah... I guess you're right," he agreed slowly, "But how do I prove him wrong?" he asked turning to look up at Gai. "Neji gives up too easy, even when he's so stupidly stubborn about it. How do I prove there's no such thing as Fate, when all he's going to do when I beat him is say it must have been my Fate to win?"

"I don't have the answers to that, my youthful Konoha sapling. We can only do our best, and hope the Fires of our Youth will open his eyes," the Jounin said.

The blond grimaced, "Somehow, I think it's going to take a little more than that, Sensei."

 _ **000**_

Nobuyuki's farm was fairly big, and the old man was just as gnarled, foul tempered, and crotchety as Yamada warned them. The militia officer leaving them at the gate to the property with a sour look on his face, "Even if the old geezer paid me cash in hand, I wouldn't set foot back in this courtyard. Good luck, kiddies, you're going to need it."

The first thing out of Nobuyuki's mouth when he saw them was to bitch them out for being late, then for being Genin, then for having such obviously filthy and shifty looks about them. True to warning, he tried to whack Naruto in the shin with his walking stick as he stomped past them, but a civilian was only ever going to hit a Ninja if it was a surprise or the ninja _let_ them. Naruto took enough abuse in Konoha, he wasn't about to take it outside as well, and took a careful step back that took him out of the old man's range.

The geezer glared at him, but said nothing as he marched them through the farm towards the big trouble area.

Apparently the bandits only ever tried accessing the southern fields, trashing property and crops as they went. One memorable time they trashed an entire field _and_ got into the one next to it just to steal the crops there, ignoring the ones in the first field and actively befouling it as they went. It was clearly bandits or hoodlums actively looking to do him wrong, put him out of business, and out on the streets! He wanted them dead and their bodies piked in his field as scarecrows!

Gai pointed out that such a mission would be a B-ranked Chuunin mission, and beamed cheerfully at him as he explained that Konoha didn't advocate child murderers when the old man looked to protest.

Well, regardless of how foul their client was, at least the mission would be pretty. The final three fields were all filled with fully blooming hydrangea bushes, some of which looked semi-shredded and ripped up, but the others were bursting with blues, pinks, yellows, and purples. It was going to be a total pain in the ass watching their backs but...

"Do you mind if the bushes get a little damaged?" Naruto asked, gently fingering one of the blooms, "I can set some traps amongst them that the bandits'll never see, and we can snap them all up the next time they come by," he explained and howled when the old man's walking stick crashed down on top of his head.

"AN' RUIN MY FARM?! IDIOT BOY! THESE PLANTS ARE WORTH MORE TO ME THAN ALL FOUR O'YAH! Not a single leaf had better be damaged, or I'm not paying Konoha SHIT! I need them to replenish the nitrogen in the earth for the next round of planting this year! They're absolutely _essential_!" the old man roared, stamping both his feet and waving his stick around in quite the impressive tantrum for a man in his seventies.

Naruto grit his teeth, rubbing the top of his head and glaring at the old man as Gai-sensei ushered him away.

"You deserved that," Neji observed blandly as he turned away to examine the fencing, "Suggesting we damage a client's property..."

The blond stuck his tongue out at him angrily, "They're literally just flowers, asshole. I don't know where he got the bullshit about them replenishing the soil, but it's wrong. Clover works best for that, or hell, just spread some bull-manure mixed with water and woodchippings and that'll work better than hydrangea," he grumbled glaring at the brunet in frustration.

"Really?" Tenten asked as she knelt down at the base of one of the damaged bushes. "What DOES hydrangea do then?"

Naruto shrugged a shoulder, "It _looks_ pretty. I mean, the _roots_ are sometimes used in hookey herbalist drinks to treat urine infections and the like, and last I heard some noble in Cha no Kuni took to making _tea_ out of it." He scratched his thick mane of hair as he thought, "In Fire Country though, it gets used as either ornamentation, or recreational drugs."

"Drugs?" Tenten prompted while Neji scoffed dismissively and turned away, folding his arms.

Naruto nodded, "Smoking primarily. Causes hallucinations if taken enough. But it's _suuper_ toxic because of the cyanide," he explained seriously, holding a finger up. "It fell out of popularity with nobility because of that, and they started focusing primarily on opiates instead."

"They're made out of poppies, right?" Tenten asked as she made her way through the bushes.

"Yeah, made from mature seeds," he called over to her.

"Well, there's poppies growing under these bushes," she announced, "Though, not so much anymore. A lot of them got ripped up."

Naruto dove onto his hands and knees, scurrying under the fragrant branches of the hydrangea bushes to examine their bases and – she was most definitely correct. Those were the remnants of poppy straw. There wasn't much remaining, it was clear that the thieves had snatched just about every seed-pod they could find, as well as half the stalk with them. But there were a few they'd missed, and some that still flowered tangled up within the bushes. They had not been removed with anything resembling a gardener or even a farmer's care, rather more like a thief's smash and grab, leaving bruised and torn plant-matter behind that had a high probability of producing less in the future. If it didn't just die outright.

Crawling out, he took in the hydrangea bushes with new eyes. At first they'd assumed the damage was mere vandalism, but now that he was paying attention, thinking of it as stealing, it became all together very clear that it wasn't vandalism that damaged the bushes, but careless harvesting by rough hands, and little consideration for damage.

"That old geezer," Naruto complained, his eyebrows knitting in anger, "He's no farmer, he's a drug baron!"

Neji threw him a look of disgust, he opened his mouth to say something only to pause, his eyes sliding to the bushes before he frowned thoughtfully, "That's a heavy accusation to throw around," he said instead.

The blond rolled his shoulders as he reached up and picked one of the leafs, turning it over to examine it, "Yeah well. Spend as much time on the fringe of the Red Light district as me, and you pick up some stuff about drugs. Hydrangea isn't illegal, but opiates? That _is._ And the amount of it that gets smuggled into Konoha has skyrocketed since the Military Police were disbanded. Lotta people in the Red Lights are addicted, including kids. You hear a lot of things if you think to pay attention, who is smuggling what, who has a base of operations where," he admitted bitterly as he dropped the leaf and rummaged his map out. "Including gossip about trade routes. Tanzaku is primarily landlocked, but here? It's less than fifty miles from River Country. Otafuku Gai has a guy, supposedly an Iwa missing-nin but no one's quite sure, but _apparently_ he's taken over a lot of the yakuza groups, and brought them to heel. He's got a route that supposedly cuts through to Tanzaku, and into River, before shipping out from River either north or south to where-ever he pleases."

"How'd you find out about that?" Tenten asked, popping up from under the bushes on Neji's otherside, flowers and twigs in her buns.

"Madam Koiyo's clients like to brag, and sometimes she'll let me use their bathrooms in exchange for a little repair work as long as I stay out of sight," the blond explained with a shrug.

There was a pause and then Gai-sensei's voice came from two bushes over, "Naruto-kun, Madam Koiyo is a Lady of Negotiable Virtues, yes?" he asked delicately as he surfaced from amongst violently pink and blue flowers.

Naruto nodded, "Yeah. She owns one of the brothels," he admitted blithely making Tenten's face screw up and Neji to boggle in their weirdly dignified way that clan kids from overly stuffy families did.

"And no one has – " Gai attempted to ask only for Naruto to shake his head rapidly.

"I live next door. And a lot of the girls share the building with me. We kinda get treated the same by Konoha as a whole, so, there's a kinda solidarity. They taught me how to cook and clean up after myself, I taught them how to fix the stuff in their apartments when our landlord was being an asshole. They needed some repair work at the House, and brought it up to Madam Koiyo. She didn't want to pay any money, so we worked out a compromise. My shower is busted beyond repair, so she lets me use their personal bathhouse and maybe grab some food outta the left-overs, and I fix stuff. I'm super good at sewing lace stuff now! I can even make it too, though it takes forever, and I sometimes stab myself cause I used my old blunt kunai as rods instead'a the – what? What're those faces for?" he asked catching the weird expressions on his teammate's faces.

"You sew up lacy stuff belonging to prostitutes?" Tenten asked sounding horrified.

The blond nodded, "Yeah. What about it? It's just clothes."

"I think when we return to Konoha I may need to give you a talk about the Blossoms and the Bees," Gai-sensei chuckled.

"Oh I've had that already," Naruto dismissed, "Yuri-chan and Kyoko-chan talked me through it all."

Neji made a weird noise and shook his head while Tenten burst out laughing at the look on Gai-sensei's face.

Naruto rolled his eyes, "Who do you _think_ helped me make my Sexy Ninjutsu?" he demanded in exasperation, " _Anyway_ , according to the girls, this Gantetsu guy has an _opium_ smuggling route that cuts through the area and on to River Country. Since this old geezer is growing poppies under his hydrangea chances are he's a supplier. So what do, Sensei? Opium is illegal."

It took less than a moment for the Jounin to get his brain back on the mission, almost immediately shifting gear back into Shinobi mode instead of Sensei mode. He struck a heroic pose, "Leave Nobuyuki-san to me, my Youthful Saplings! First and foremost, we are to protect the farm, and thus the _evidence_ of his wrong doing! Once our Youthful Mission is complete, we shall report our findings to Hokage-sama and to the Daimyou's Youthful Enforcers!"

"Will they even believe the words of a Deadlast Genin?" Neji asked doubtfully, making Naruto flinch and shoot him a sour look. Tenten straight up elbowed him in the side for the scornful tone.

Gai-sensei beamed at him, "They will believe the words of his Jounin instructor, and I have full faith in Naruto-kun's capabilities, Neji-kun, just as I have faith in yours. Much of young Naruto-kun's home is filled with plants, he is an accomplished botanist!"

 _ **000**_

 **Chapter six finished.**

 **C-rank curse strikes! Their client is a fucking drug supplier! But who are the thieves, did the old man really think he could slide this by Ninja, or is something else afoot?**


	7. Chapter 7

Accidents happen, and sometimes by design. Naruto was determined to become a Genin, it was just his luck that this year they were being tested in the Kawarimi instead of the Bunshin due to a single lazy Admin-chuunin. Team Gai!Naruto, Maito!Lee (adoption yay), BAMF!everyone.

 _ **000**_

 **Chapter Seven**

Naruto still wasn't allowed to set any traps in the field of hydrangea. They needed to keep it as pristine as possible for evidence purposes according to Gai-sensei who was beaming so hard his teeth were yet again weaponised flash-tags for all intents and purposes. Nor was he allowed to trap the area _outside_ the fields, because they had to confirm exactly who was doing the 'vandalism'/theft by catching them red-handed within the field.

The blond was on the verge of chewing his own leg off from sheer boredom and aggravation.

He was even contemplating repairing the irrigation system just to keep his hands and his brain busy because if he had to stand there and listen to another one of Neji's Fate snips he was going to wrap the Hyuuga in a Northern Dragon's Web trap, and set him on fire. Or tell him exactly how pathetic he thought he was. Both would be about as explosive as the other. But one would see Neji being hurt, and the other one would see _him_ being hurt, so...

The blond turned on heel and stalked away, unable to stomach any more.

Nobuyuki was supposed to be a drug baron (or at least a supplier), and no matter what Neji said to the contrary: the old geezer had hydrangeas in his furthest flung fields, with poppies growing under them, he lied to their faces about the purpose of the bushes, and even went so far as to tell them quite plainly that the bushes were worth more than their lives. Totally a criminal.

But... there was something else niggling at Naruto's mind. Something important.

The old geezer was in his home, likely hiding from Gai-sensei who was intense even on a good day. Only Konoha citizens had become used to his eccentricities to deal with him any kind of reasonable manner, so the old geezer was probably either terrified or dazed. Both were good. Both kept him out of the way while Naruto nosed around the farm. They had arrived fairly late in the day, and exploring the fields for traps took a bit longer than Naruto expected – mainly because Neji wouldn't believe him when he said his section was clear and insisted on checking it twice, despite their team's _trap specialist_ telling him otherwise. Man, he was going to string that arrogant bastard up by his toes one of these days.

 _Anyway_ , if he was using the vandalism as an excuse to smuggle his supplies out, or if they were only trashing the fields, thus trapping him on the property and preventing him from making deliveries, then there should have been a stock of drugs being stored _somewhere_ on the property. The difficult part there was _somewhere_. Naruto's nose was good, but he had never actually smelt a lot of poppies, and never poppy thresh. He couldn't get a good whiff back in the field either because the whole place was soaked with the reek of hydrangea, so he wasn't able to – _that's it!_

He could just sniff out the hottest concentration of hydrangea on the property that _wasn't_ in the southern fields. He was a genius.

He got to work immediately. It stood to reason that a stock-pile would be kept inside, so he concentrated around the buildings. This wasn't a livestock farm, though Nobuyuki kept a few animals, goats, chickens, a handful of pigs, and a few oxen. Naruto checked their enclosures first, because anyone smart enough to hide poppies under the more legal hydrangea would probably hide their illegal stocks under the smell of farm animals, but no luck. Not even a whiff of hydrangea amongst the animals sheds and pens, nor even their own feed bins and tack rooms.

He went to the barns then. And sneezed multiple times, painfully, at the amount of dust and pollen in the air. It was full of hay, grains, and had a fat brown tabby cat watching him from the top of one haybail with lamp-like yellow eyes. He eyed it suspiciously, but the feline merely meowed at him, rolled its head and then went back to sleep. Not bothered in the slightest. So this must have been a well-travelled area. Even with his nose streaming, and his eyes itching, he couldn't smell any hydrangea in there. Just to be safe though, he went to every corner of the barn, up the stairs, down, checked every room by picking the locks, found an erotic flip book featuring a lot of naked women having sex with other women (he had to giggle a little at how stupid the positions were, Yuri-chan told him how a lot of clients kept throwing their backs out trying to copy them, so she'd gotten pretty good at massages simply through necessity). A fair bit of alcohol, a still for making alcohol, an apple press, and he'd even pulled open some of the huge hay-piles to make sure there wasn't a cavity inside them hiding the goods. Nothing. But he'd been as thorough as physically possible so he quickly moved on, sneezing and groaning as he finally got out into the open air with relief. Maybe he should have swallowed his pride and brought Neji with him?

Ugh, no. Neji wasn't _essential_ for this, and Naruto wanted to rub it into his face when _he_ was the one who found the hidden cache of evidence while the Hyuuga sat on his butt and looked down his nose at everyone.

The main barn and the animal pens were a bust, there was little chance of getting into the old geezer's house right _now_. He'd wait to check that out, make sure he'd cleared the rest of the place entirely before breaking in there and looking for it.

Instead, he summoned a small handful of Kage Bunshin to check all the fields. There must have been tool-sheds and shelters elsewhere, meaning that there was a chance of the cache being stored somewhere else. If anything, Naruto would have bet on it being either the northern or the western fields. Anyone investigating the main farm wouldn't find anything, and it would also give the old geezer enough of a chance that his contacts could sneak to the outlying stores and make off with the cache before any investigations can reach them. Downside for them that _this_ ninja had one hell of a nose, and Kage Bunshin in his belt. He would have this whole farm searched within the day!

He found them in the western field, like he thought he would, an old milking shed, likely either belonging to the farm next door, or from a by-gone era when this place once had livestock. Either way, he found the building literally on the very outskirts of the land, reeking of the hydrangeas that were a good seven miles away.

The issue there was that there was _nothing else in there_. No poppies. No thresh.

Just neatly packed bundles of hydrangeas, crated up, and tagged to specific locations – Earth Country, River Country, Tea Country, one was even headed to Rice Country, on the other side of Fire. A clipboard with papers was next to the door, detailing each shipment's penultimate destination, the buyer, the smuggler, and even a small side-note on what it would be used for so if anyone came looking he could be sure of what kind of danger he could be in. Very thorough, very smart. Naruto could almost compliment him for it, if it wasn't so horrible. Most of the hydrangea was for drug purposes, but the shipment to Tea Country was, unsurprisingly, for tea purposes, and in fact, had been marked to be not only _hand picked_ but also transported in _waterproof_ containers, or seals, so as to prevent bruising or rot.

He sighed, scratching his head as he glowered around himself at the store-room.

Hydrangea was not illegal.

He needed to find the poppy store.

Maybe the old man put it in the _eastern_ field, just to confuse or mess with anyone looking for it? He supposed it would have made a kind of sense. If an inspection showed up, caught his buyers with the poppy, he could turn around and say that they must have _come here_ with it, because wasn't their route from one side to the other? Why would they pick it up from the eastern side when it would be easier to collect it from the western? Kind of childish in reasoning but it would be enough to cast 'reasonable doubt' over the proceedings, which would mean a full investigation, and thus time for his contacts to bribe the appropriate magistrates to ensure his operations wouldn't be closed down.

Argh, his head hurt. Such a pain in the ass.

Either way, he needed to seal this evidence up. Rummaging a scroll from his belt of pouches, he quickly set to work sealing up first the oh-so-important papers, and records, and then moving onto each individually packed bale of hydrangea. It was sweaty and time consuming work, and he'd been forced to stop and light one of the lanterns as it started growing dark outside.

He smirked smugly as he snapped the full to bursting storage scroll shut, and looked over the empty room as he tucked it away. Neji was going to pull that sour-lemon face when Naruto came back and showed them how awesome he was. Just to be sure, and extra thorough, he did another sweep of the room now it was empty. Looking for fuuinjutsu, handles, switches, _anything_ that could open a hidden cubbyhole, a tunnel, whatever. But there was nothing, and he could safely say that this particular area was clean.

Naruto grinned as he strutted out of the storehouse into the cool night air – and gagged as the smell of smoke hit his nose hard enough to cut through the cloying blanket of hydrangea he had been covered in.

The sky over the southern fields was glowing.

His stomach dropped, and his heart thudded particularly hard in his chest. The field was burning. _Where was his team?!_

He bolted. Chakra burning through his limbs as he flung himself over the fences and into fields, dodging trees, even as his hand dug into his pockets for a strip of cloth that he was quick to dunk into one of the stagnant pools belonging to the irrigation system. He tied it over his mouth and nose as he plunged into the thick billowing black and grey smoke coming from the burning field of hydrangea.

"Tenten!" he shouted over the crackling fire, and roaring air.

He found Gai-sensei first.

He was high as a fucking kite, trouble breathing, he was sat down and swaying, his face and hands flushed a weird cherry red colour.

"Sensei! Gai-sen-WHOA!" he yelped as he was shoved backwards by the _wind pressure_ of his teacher's swinging arm. The fire behind him roared all the harder in the sudden updraft and the blond squawked in pain as it scorched up his right-side. He dropped and rolled on the slightly smouldering ground to put out the flames that caught his sleeve.

"Naruto- kun," the Jounin slurred, eyes focusing on his student. "I am sorry my youthful student!" he exclaimed, voice harsh and rasping, "I cannot control my strength in this state! Find your teammates and get yourselves to safety!" he commanded, wavering in place.

Naruto shook his head, "And leave you in the middle of an inferno?! Screw that, dattebayo! Kage Bunshin no jutsu!" he crossed his fingers and summoned twelve clones.

"We've got you, sensei!" three of them chorused, grabbing their teacher and hoisting his heavy frame up over their shoulders.

The others sped off through the burning fields to find Neji and Tenten.

He twitched, hearing foot-steps behind him. A familiar figure ducked a burning bush and stepped into his line of sight, their face slightly obscured by a Kiri-style breathing mask, pausing in surprise.

"Ah. I had hoped to get all of you at once," Yamada Takeshi lamented with a sheepish chuckle, as if he weren't surrounded by burning bushes.

The warning to tell the youth to run before he got hurt withered and died on Naruto's tongue, unvoiced. 'All of you at once'?

"Yamada-san?" he heard his own voice rasp, sounding young and confused.

The militia man shrugged a lazy shoulder, "Nothing personal to you kid," he admitted blandly, "You just got in the way is all. Feel free to curse me if you like, you probably haven't got long, we used Chakra fire to burn the field so... the cyanide has probably reached lethal levels by now. Bet you're feeling it now, dizzy yeah? Vertigo will set in soon, difficulty breathing, erratic heartbeat. It's not a bad way to go, you'll fall asleep first. You'll be dead before the fire gets you," the militia explained with an apathetic shrug. As if he hadn't been laughing at Naruto's jokes yesterday, as if he hadn't shown Tenten a couple of tricks for handling a spear, bragged about his boyfriend back in Otafuku Gai, shared food and water with them.

"I'll kick your fucking ass, you bastard, 'ttebayo!" the blond snarled.

Yamada shrugged a shoulder, callous half-smile on his face, "No. You won't. You're gunna die, kid. And I don't have to lift a finger. In fact, it's better if I don't. Any stab marks on your body, and Konoha'll know that this wasn't just a tragic accident befalling an unlucky Genin-team and their dumbass fruitcake of a sensei. By now, Tetsu's finished with the old fucker up at the farm house, and when the fires have burnt out, and the ashes have settled, I'll write a truly heart-wrenching missive to Konoha about her tragic loss, arrange to have your bodies transported back, and inherit this whole farm from my estranged father whom I never knew existed, who hated my mother for refusing his hand because she was too indebted to the pimp that owned her, but didn't know how to connect to the son he never knew."

Naruto flustered, "You – you would kill your own _father?!_ " he shrieked.

Yamada laughed, the sound hissed and whined through his mask, but he bent double and bellowed with laughter, "Fuck no! But that's what his Will is going to say, and with my mother long dead from overdose, who's really going to be able to say that he isn't?" he demanded mirthfully before taking three steps backwards towards the burning trees. "Ahh, kid, it's a shame really. You and the little miss were pretty cute for Konoha ninja. I'll pour you some sake for Obon," he promised with a careless smile before he ducked under a burning bush.

"GET BACK HERE!" Naruto roared, springing after him.

 _ **000**_

Gai-sensei was _heavy_ , but he was pliant and docile as the three clones hustled him up to old man Nobuyuki's house, only to pause when they saw the broken door, and heard the sound of raised voices, flesh hitting flesh, and the old man crying out in pain.

The three gently set Gai-sensei down, the green clad Jounin taking a deep breath, and then forcing himself to his feet. He wavered, and swayed dangerously on his feet but managed to stay upright.

"Flush them out here. I'll handle the rest," he managed to rasp, eyes narrowing as the three Bunshin's saluted and piled in through the open door.

" - correctly, or I'll take another toe," an unknown male voice snarled over the sound of Nobuyuki's sobbing.

He barrelled into the bedroom, taking a split-second to identify old Nobu curled on the floor, one of his feet missing three toes, a bleeding head-wound, bruises, a broken hand, and burns up and down his cheek and forehead from a cigar. Stood over him was a tall dark haired man in a fancy pale-grey coat that looked like it cost a pretty ryo. Set upon his head was a slashed through Iwa-headband.

Missing Nin.

Immediately the name of the game changed. Two of him went for the stranger, pincering him between them, one going low and the other high. The third went over them, bounced off the wall, snatched the old man up in his arms, and shot through the stranger's legs and straight back out the door he came in.

He heard a shout and the sound of feet, and backflipped onto the roof of the house the second he burst from the door.

He had just enough time to see the Missing Nin barrel out, and then into Gai-sensei's Leaf Hurricane, before he felt the house _shake_ with the force of the stranger's impact, and see Gai-sensei fall flat on his face.

"Sensei!" He jumped down, Nobu still in his arms, and quickly rushed to his teacher's side, hearing the sound fo kunai clashing again in the house as the man burst back out and saw the two of them.

He cursed, and glared at Nobuyuki, "I'll come back for you when the poison has run its course," he sneered, and then bolted, rushing into the darkness of the fields towards the fire.

Naruto snarled, about to follow only to hear the sound of Gai-sensei's breathing change from short pants, to harsh wheezing. His heart clenched.

Cyanide poisoning was either immediately lethal in high-concentrations, or could have cumulative affects in low-concentrations. He didn't know how exposed Gai-sensei had been. And he didn't know where Neji and Tenten were either. He was all alone. With a burning farm, his client sans toes, and Missing Nin prowling the darkness.

He needed to fortify the house, and call for reinforcements.

He looked at the other clone, both of them understanding at the exact same time what they needed to do.

They split. One of them got old man Nobu secured in the house, Gai-sensei too, what little medical aid that could be given he did, but there wasn't much he could do with his limited knowledge. One began to lay traps around the house, securing it with every defensive fuuinjutsu and wire-trick that had been in Tobi's handbook. The other took the main road, and raced as hard and as fast as he dared for Konoha.

 _ **000**_

Two of Naruto's clones managed to find Tenten and Neji.

The two genin had burns up and down their arms, and Neji's legs where his shorts hadn't protected him all that well. They were panting for breath, just as weirdly coloured as Gai-sensei, but unconscious as they lay like ragdolls in one of the irrigation ditches half-submerged in stagnant water where the fire would just pass over them.

The two clones exchanged looks of worry, and quickly scooped both of them up. The best place to wait out the fire would be old Nobu's house, that was where the other three clones were taking Gai-sensei as well. They could hear Boss Naruto shouting somewhere in the distance, so he had probably found who was responsible for the fire, but right now, they had the job of getting their teammates to safety.

Carefully dragging the two soaking wet genin onto their backs, the two used the irrigation ditch to race out of the southern field, before cutting across the central ones straight to Nobuyuki-san's house.

What they found was a broken door, blood on the floor, half-set up traps and fuuinjutsu. And two of their fellows with kunai ready and willing to gut them.

Neji and Tenten quickly joined Gai-sensei in the house, Nobuyuki watched with empty eyes, his feet heavily bandaged along with his other injuries, as Naruto did what he could for his teammates, nearly on the verge of tears as they were in _so much worse a state_ than Gai-sensei. Tenten was barely breathing.

At this rate, they wouldn't be able to wait for back-up. If he wanted his teammates to survive, he was going to have to abandon the mission.

 _ **000**_

Yamada was most definitely not a normal civilian, his movements were trained, and chakra enhanced. Clumsy, so he could safely say the man wasn't a legitimate ninja, perhaps an academy drop-out who kept up with his own studies. But either way. In the burning field, simply just staying out of Naruto's reach in the cloying smoke was far easier than it should have been. He wasn't lying when he said the toxicity of the smoke would kill him.

It _should_ be killing him.

Every time he blasted through a huge plume of smoke he felt dizzy and light headed, staggering and nearly falling only for his head to clear, and his temper to ratchet up another notch.

And then a man in a white coat suddenly appeared, he snatched Yamada up around the waist and sped away far faster than Naruto could keep up with.

The blond cursed and staggered after them, the cloth around his mouth was black with smoke and his eyes were _burning_. The two sped out of the farm properties and into the surrounding woods, the smoke was not _as_ thick out here, but still drifted lazily under the branches, trapped and unable to rise.

"-told me it was Maito fucking Gai!" an unknown voice snarled in the distance.

"I told you it was a genin team," Yamada retorted heatedly.

"The Azure _Beast_ of Konoha has the second highest fucking kill count of the last Shinobi War! He _earned_ the title of beast!" the unknown man flared lividly, "You would send me in blind to tangle with a Jounin of that calibre?!"

"That fruitcake? Somehow I doubt he's all that," Yamada scoffed, once again setting Naruto's temper boiling as he crept after them, the lack of smoke clearing his head as his fingers dipped into his pouches and began to tug out wire and tags and kunai.

"The longer a Jounin has been active, the more eccentric they are to compensate for the blood on their hands, idiot boy! What was the first thing I taught you!"

"How to suck dick properly," Yamada retorted sassily, sounding both sarcastic and suggestive.

There was a long pause as Naruto ducked down low and summoned a trio of Kage Bunshin, all with the same idea in mind as him as the four split up and began to lay their ambush properly.

"Relax, Tetsu," Yamada soothed, "The chakra we used to burn the evidence made the toxicity ten-fold. They'll die before the dawn without medical aid. And then we just have to deal with the old man and scrub the blood out of the house. No trouble. We have time." There was a rustle of clothing and Naruto chanced a peek around a tree-branch to see Yamada with his arms wrapped around the Missing Nin's shoulders, the two of them firmly latched onto each other by the mouth. "What say we enjoy our victory while they breathe their last?" he suggested breathily.

Tetsu rasped a low chuckle, his hands tightening on the militia's hips, "And people call me sadistic," he rumbled.

"What can I say... I had a good teacher," Yamada all but purred as he arched against the dark haired man.

The kunai Naruto threw pierced him in the back of the neck, sinking in, but not killing him. His mouth opened, and all the breath left him in a single whoosh as his eyes went wide, almost bulging out of their sockets as his body went limp.

"Takeshi!" Tetsu yelled, catching the younger man's weight and looking up to spot the return of his nightmares made flesh.

Blond hair, and blue eyes like chips of ice placed in flesh.

"Yondai-" his voice cut out as a second kunai winged for him from the side, he dropped his lover and darted away, leaving him to gasp on the ground as he skidded to a stop, deflecting another kunai coming at him. Spinning desperately around himself as more, and more, shadows of the Konoha Yellow Flash appeared from the darkness.

That same yellow hair, the glacier blue eyes taken from the deepest reaches of Snow Country.

He ran.

He ran – and then the trap was sprung.

And he couldn't anymore.

 _ **000**_

"I'm leaving seven clones here to protect you, and secure the prisoners, Nobuyuki-san," Naruto explained as he rigged up the multiple stretchers for his team. It was still dark out, his heart was in his throat because that _bastard_ had been right. Tenten and Neji had gotten worse in the twenty minutes since he pulled them out of that ditch. They wouldn't live to see dawn if he didn't get them to a medic nin ASAP.

Yamada was face down on the floor in Nobuyuki's kitchen. Naruto had left the kunai in his neck, sick to his stomach and unable to pull it out knowing that if he did the militia would die, would bleed out. But if he left it in, he would live, and continue to be paralysed. Tetsu was unconscious. And with the fuuinjutsu that his clone was painting on him while he made stretchers, he would continue to remain that way until it was removed.

Old man Nobuyuki was sat at his kitchen table, staring at nothing, and not answering.

Naruto felt bad just leaving him like this, but he didn't really have a choice. His team were going to _die_ if he didn't get them back to Konoha on the double.

So.

He left.

 _ **0000**_

 **Omfg. This chapter was such a fucking trial. But thankfully it is done. I forgot halfway through how I wanted this to play out, Yamada and Tetsu being a couple completely blind-sided me but it worked so well, originally all three OCs were going to die, Nobu was going to be dead when Naruto and Gai appeared, the kunai to the neck was gunna kill Yamada, and Naruto's traps were a little more lethal than he intended, and even Tetsu died. So Naruto was going to literally leave a massacre behind him. But this works a little better to me.**

 **Stay tuned for the next chapter. Introducing Hinata, Naruto's first Talk no Jutsu, and the HORMONE HAMMER.**


	8. Chapter 8

Accidents happen, and sometimes by design. Naruto was determined to become a Genin, it was just his luck that this year they were being tested in the Kawarimi instead of the Bunshin due to a single lazy Admin-chuunin. Team Gai!Naruto, Maito!Lee (adoption yay), BAMF!everyone.

 _ **000**_

 **Chapter Eight**

A medic team was already mustering by the time Naruto rushed his team through the main-gate. All three of them were taken into emergency care, and Naruto was collared by a team of Chuunin to immediately turn on heel and go straight back to Nobuyuki-san's farm. If it hadn't been for the fact that Kakashi-san had been the one to grab him, he would have fought them tooth and nail to stay with his team.

"Trust the medics. Let's go secure the client and what evidence we can get," the silver haired jounin said, skipping forward a single step before taking off at a run.

Naruto snarled, looking over his shoulder to where his team were being hustled off. His clones were still with them. And – the urge to kawarimi with one of them and take their place was _so_ strong...

Gai-sensei would be shamed if he tried to shirk his duties, people would think he was a poor sensei.

The blond spat several vile words before he turned on heel and took off after Kakashi-san, the two Chuunin who usually manned the gate-desk bringing up the rear as another chuunin with his face covered in bandages, and a kunoichi with dark green hair took their place. He pulled up to the jounin and then overtook him in the tree-branches, surging on ahead of the group and ignoring the roads they took to _get_ to the farm in his desire to get back, finish up, and then return to Konoha as quickly as possible.

None of them commented, thankfully, just kept pace with him until dawn broke across the horizon, Naruto's skin crawling with the awareness that his team could _be dead by now and he had no idea if they were or they weren't – if he got them to the village in time_. They vaulted into the eastern fields, speeding through smoky smelling crops and straight to the main-farm house.

Too impatient to dismantle the traps he'd laid out, Naruto spammed a handful of clones ahead of them to spring them all and allow them to rush through without hindrance.

The farm house was silent as the grave, and completely unchanged from when Naruto left.

Yamada was still unconscious, kunai sticking out of the back of his neck. Tetsu the Missing Nin was still sealed and tied up. Old man Nobuyuki was sat up to his kitchen table, silent and dazed. One of the clones had made a cup of tea for him, but it was sat cold and untouched at his elbow, and the three blonds were restlessly prowling the house on tenderhooks, half expecting Konoha ninja, half expecting more missing nin, or perhaps yakuza or other thugs working for Tetsu.

"My, my," Kakashi-san murmured as he knelt down beside Tetsu, "The Flint Tiger. A fairly well known B-rank missing nin from Iwa," the jounin announced for the benefit of their audience.

Naruto scoffed, "Well known for what? Being a wimp?" he demanded caustically as he folded his arms, "Can we hurry it up?"

Kakashi's eye creased in a smile at him, "Kotetsu, Izumo, what can you do for them?" he asked, nodding to the old man and Yamada.

The one with the bandage across his nose and the black porcupine hair shrugged a shoulder, toeing at Yamada, "Medic Nin'll have to remove the kunai in his neck if we want him to live long enough to be questioned."

"Shock," the brown haired one with the nice smile summed up from where he had been checking over old man Nobuyuki. "Little bit of blood-loss. He needs to see a doctor about those toes, and the cigar burns, but other than that no physical harm," he told them cheerfully.

Naruto huffed, "Can we go back now – please?" he tacked on as an after-thought, because Tenten told him that some people got a bug up their butt when you didn't have manners. He doubted Kakashi-san would care, but all the same, Naruto didn't want to embarrass him in front of other people and thus making the likelihood of his agreeing all the more UNlikely.

Kakashi ruffled his hair, "Not until we find the evidence."

"I already _have_ the hydrangea stored, along with all his client information, trade routes, pick up times and dates, and stuff!" Naruto exclaimed, "I... couldn't find the poppy store though," he reluctantly ground out.

"I don't deal in poppy," Nobuyuki grunted, still staring at the wall as though he were a thousand miles away.

"Then explain the thresh in your field!" Naruto howled, pointing at him furiously, "I know what I saw!"

Nobuyuki just shook his head, "I don't deal in poppy," he repeated dully. Like a broken record.

Kakashi hummed, "Well, let's get these guys back to interrogation. Another team will be along shortly in order to comb the property, I'll make sure an Inuzuka is assigned."

And with that, the two assisting Chuunin summoned a few stretchers from their storage scrolls, and Naruto summoned a few more Bunshin to carry them, the group made their way back to Konoha with their prisoners – _at long fucking last_.

 _ **000**_

They survived. His team survived.

Naruto figured he could be forgiven for crying when he heard that piece of good news, they were all safe, bandaged up, hooked to respirators, and laid out in a team ward. It was a small room, built with four people in mind, white and pale blue, with white sheets and pale green blankets, hard wooden chairs, and tables on wheels. There was about five feet between each bed, and three of those feet were occupied by bulky equipment needed to maintain the respirators and monitoring equipment.

He spent three hours of the day at each bed, updating them on what was going on. He hadn't gone home yet, nor slept or bathed. He didn't want to leave until someone woke up, until he was _certain_ that his team were okay.

Gai-sensei looked so _old_ and _tired_ in the medically induced coma the Doctor put him in.

Tenten is unchanged, she looked queasy and weirdly pale now after the vivid flush her skin had sported due to the smoke faded. But she still looked like Tenten, his bestfriend. (He might have spent more time with her than the others, just a little, and felt guilty for it as well, because he liked Gai-sensei too! And while he might have had his differences with Neji, that didn't mean he wasn't worried about his Hyuuga teammate! When he'd found them, Neji had his hand over Tenten's mouth and nose, and his arm was on top of her, he had tried to protect her before they passed out, that earned him _major_ plus points in Naruto's book.)

Neji though, he looked scarily _pale_ and _fragile_ in his bed. Naruto didn't really have the words to describe it, but it unsettled him greatly to see his normally snotty and powerful teammate so still and quiet, and _lax_ in sleep.

It was probably a good thing that Neji was in fact the first one to wake. Naruto had been sat at his bedside, knee jogging up and down with exhausted tension as he babbled an update, avoiding any actual _looking_ at his teammate because of how profoundly unsettling it was to see him laid so low. Medics had managed to remove the kunai he'd jammed into Yamada's spine, he'd been carted off to Interrogation by the Gruesome Twosome – the two gate chuunin – who promised that he would get _exactly_ what he deserved, along with his Iwa boyfriend. Old man Nobuyuki was still in shock, and with his feet mangled the way they were, it was unlikely he'd be able to run the farm properly anymore, he was still in questioning though so it was a toss up as to whether it would even be a problem or if he was going to be thrown into prison as an example to any other drug profiteers. An Inuzuka had been dispatched to the farm, along with some other investigative Chuunin under the command of a Jounin, they were going to find the poppy stores that Naruto hadn't been able to sniff out – though he was, like, eighty-five percent certain by this point that they weren't actually stored on the property because as _angry_ as he was with the old bastard... He honestly believed him when he said that he didn't deal in poppies. He was in too much shock, dazed, incapable of even defending himself, and probably of lying at that. So, yeah, given what kind of attitude Yamada had, coupled with the old man's difficulties even getting to those fields along with the fact he didn't even tend them anymore, it was more likely the poppy was something his workers were doing under his nose.

"That's... where – you – went?" he heard Neji's voice rasp, and near enough leapt out of his skin.

"Neji! You're awake!" he spluttered, leaping to his feet and immediately fussing over the brunet, "Hold on, I'll go call the medic, you shouldn't be awake yet – no! Leave the mask! Your lungs are super bad, you need that to breathe!" he scolded, catching the Hyuuga's hand before he could pull his oxygen mask away.

Either he was too tired to try again, or he was actually being obedient, but regardless, by the time Naruto rushed back into the room with one of the medics from the nurses' station down the corridor, Neji was sat upright against his pillows, mask still in place.

The blond hovered nervously as the medic moved around him, checking his vitals, the monitoring equipment, running glowing hands up and down his body. Neji bore it with only a mild grimace, he was still somehow... _diminished_ , but nowhere near as bad as he had been while unconscious. Instead of fragile, now he just looked slightly sick – and sulky. The medic however, was pleased with whatever progress that had been made in his sleep for combating the toxicity in his blood and flushing whatever was in his lungs.

"You'll be woozy and confused for a few more days. Keep the mask on, your lungs are a little inflamed and sore at the moment which is that chest pain you're feeling. Not surprising you're the first to wake, your female teammate has less body mass to help with the breaking down of the toxins within her system, she'll probably be waking up tomorrow. Maito-san inhaled more than was probably healthy, and he's not exactly young, his lungs have seen their fair share of damage so it's unlikely he'll be waking up before the day after tomorrow either," the medic explained as he adjusted the monitors and some of the drips and the ventilator.

"When will they be out?" Naruto asked anxiously.

Neji was the only one to see the way the man's face spasmed in disgust, he forced himself to smooth it out before facing the blond genin, "When they're ready to be released," he answered shortly before looking back to Neji, "I'll get the nurse to send you up something to eat, you've used a lot of energy during the healing process, you need to start regaining it."

And with that, he bustled off.

Remembering how the people in the markets looked at Naruto in that _exact_ manner, Neji frowned at his teammate, "Did you – _prank_ the h-hospital?" he rasped irritably.

The blond jerked and gaped at him, "NO!" he exclaimed angrily, "Pranking the Hokage Tower is one thing, but the _Hospital_? No! No, _never_. Just what do you think of – you bastard! I can't believe I was actually _worried_ about you!" he snarled, an ugly flush crawling up his cheeks as he turned on heel and stomped off to go and sit next to Tenten, pointedly turning his head away.

Well, at least this meant Neji didn't have to deal with him and could rest. He ignored the small uncomfortable flutter of guilt in the pit of his stomach, and concentrated on his meditation.

 _ **000**_

It was something of a faux pas to kick someone out of a Team Ward when they were part of said team, but that didn't stop the medics and nurses coming in at eight to throw Naruto out with strict orders to go home and bathe – he wouldn't be allowed back into the hospital unless he did, now get out. He had wanted to rage, to snarl, and stay with his team, but one of the nurses squared her stance and narrowed her eyes in a way that reminded him of Iruka-sensei before stating that they needed _rest_ , and so did he. Go home, have a bath, _eat_ something damnit, get a full eight hours sleep, and tomorrow he would be allowed back in. But until ten am, she would _personally_ prevent him from having access.

"So get your skinny butt back home, blondie. You look like death warmed over, and it's making my hands itch. Shoo," she commanded brusquely as she gestured him to the door.

Naruto grimaced and slowly shuffled away.

"Riruka, was that wise? Surely we could just _bar_ the brat from – " one of the nurses muttered in an undertone, not quiet enough that Naruto couldn't hear though.

"I will demote you to scrubbing toilets if you finish that sentence," the woman stated flatly, shutting her colleague up. "I took my Oaths seriously. But it seems as though I am one of the _few_ in this hospital that did." And with that cryptic statement the woman turned on heel and marched off down the hall to one of the nurses stations, ignoring the embarrassed nurse she left in her wake.

"Tsunade wannabe," the nurse scoffed bitchily under her breath.

Naruto huffed a small smirk as he headed for the stairs, he could think of _worse_ people to be compared to. Senju Tsunade was something of a divisive figure in their ranks, praised for her skills, her strength, her bloodlines, but reviled and scorned for her act of abandoning the village to flee her grief. They were, all of them, familiar with grief. Though they agreed that they could never understand the pain of being the last of a clan, of watching and being unable to prevent that ending, of feeling a _personal_ responsibility – as foolish as that belief was. Curses weren't real. They didn't scorn her for crawling into a bottle, many took to handling their grief in such manners. It was her act of leaving, and taking her prodigious medical knowledge with her that angered them. How many lives could have been saved if she had remained and simply... _taught_ her knowledge?

That would usually be when Tenten appeared, teeth bared in a mockery of a smile, and laid a historical smack down of the Sandaime _repeatedly_ refusing to fund every single education programme that Tsunade put forth. And she had pushed for it many times.

He missed Tenten.

Naruto sighed, rubbing his face and glancing at one of the shop windows as he passed, freezing when he got a good look at himself. Wow. The medic hadn't been lying when she said he looked terrible. Soot covered, singed, red eyed, blood spotted, and _exhausted_.

Yeah. Food and then a bath.

Sadly, Madame Koiyo's would be open by now, so she wouldn't let him in to use the facilities – they had to be careful to hide any connection to him. People were violent to the girls on a good day, no one wanted to know what the reactions would be if their customers found out about a connection to him. Loss of business would just be the start of it.

"Naruto? Oh, Kami, you look terrible!" Naruto paused, turning to stare, dull eyed and a little slow, as Haruno Sakura rushed over, shopping bag in one arm. "Are you alright?" she asked worriedly.

Naruto smiled, a little crooked, and very tired. Sakura-chan really was the best. She didn't like him much at all, he knew that, he annoyed her, but here she was... still worried, still caring about his well-being even despite that.

"Hard mission. I'm fine, just..." he looked over his shoulder back to the hospital, "my team are still in there," he admitted rubbing his face again. "The nurses kicked me out, 'tebayo."

She looked like she wanted to say something about that, but in the end, sighed. "Do you need any help getting back home?" she asked instead. Clearly if they didn't want him in the hospital then he wasn't too badly hurt, or hurt at all.

His stomach growled before he could answer and he shook his head, "Nah. I'm gunna go get some ramen first." He gave thought to inviting her, to grinning hard enough to hurt, and saying it'd be like a date, because she still looked worried and he knew that if he annoyed her she'd huff and scowl and stomp off and stop being concerned. But he couldn't muster the energy, weirdly. Not for her. He had _always_ been able to do it for her, but now... now all he could think of was Neji believing he was the kind of asshole who would prank the hospital, of Tenten lying pale and sick on too white and green bedsheets, of Gai-sensei's breath rattling in his lungs like something wet and thick.

His grin was a little sickly, and incredibly forced, "I'm fine, 'tebayo."

Her expression spasmed, and she fidgeted a moment. Looking at him, the hospital just over his shoulder, and then down at her feet and the shopping in her arm.

"If you're... sure?" she trailed off.

He nodded, "Yep. I'll get a bath after, and crash. Nurses won't let me back in until ten so I might as well get some sleep," he admitted with a forced shrug even as his stomach turned anxiously at the thought of something going wrong and his not _being_ there, or _knowing_ until – actually, fuck it. He summoned a Kage Bunshin who saluted him and bounded off, racing up the side of the hospital building and sliding the window open to his team's room, closing it behind him, he could see the faint puff of smoke that heralded his henge technique. Good. If anything happened, his clone would dispel and he would get the memory.

"What?" Sakura-chan blurted in confusion.

Naruto glanced at her, "Kage Bunshin, 'tebayo. Solid clone technique. They're used in scouting, they transmit memories of what they see when they're dispelled. If something happens, I'll know," he explained as he shoved his hands into his pockets and shrugged. "See ya round, Sakura-chan."

He walked away, and wondered why it felt so weird to be the one doing it.

 _ **000**_

Ayame-chan and Teuchi-jiji fussed over him a lot when he showed up, they managed to wrangle the whole story out of him over two free bowls of ramen, and one that he actually paid for. Knowing that if he went home to get a spare change of clothes and his toiletries, he would crash and not bother with a bath (he had been notorious in his youth for it), Ayame rushed into the back and returned with a spare uniform and the emergency wash supplies she kept. It might have been for girls, but Naruto didn't mind, it was kind of her to offer, and it smelt _so nice_. No wonder girls always smelled good if this was what they washed with.

He promised to get the uniform washed and returned as soon as possible, and then made his way off to the public bathhouse. It was fairly busy at this time of day, the desk clerk looked like he wanted to protest letting Naruto in, but the line was long and he looked frazzled enough as it was that he just took the money and let Naruto pass without a comment.

Luckily at this time of night, there were more Shinobi customers than civilian, and Naruto only received a small handful of second glances as he shuffled into the changing rooms. Like many post-mission shinobi, they were only interested in getting clean, and soaking away their aches and bruises.

Done, he dressed in his borrowed uniform, and shuffled back to his empty apartment, still reeking of dust and old ramen cups he forgot to throw away before leaving. It had only been four days, and his little hole in the wall somehow looked even more _desolate_ than when he left.

He would _honestly_ rather sleep in the training grounds.

Ah. No. Wait. He'd left his pack at Nobuyuki's. His, Tenten's, Neji's, and Gai-sensei.

He wondered dully if the investigative team would return them.

He collapsed into bed, barely having the strength to drag his blanket over himself before he was out like a light.

He woke up at eleven o'clock when his Bunshin dispelled, jarring him awake with the knowledge that Tenten was conscious now.

He rushed through a quick, cold shower, dragged out the first change of clothes his hands landed on, and bolted out of the door. He stopped briefly to buy a peach for breakfast, and again at Ino's flowershop to buy some for his team, her Dad was manning the counter but Inoichi-san was pretty alright as far as adults went. He was nosy though, always asking Naruto questions about his feelings and stuff, so he didn't really like hanging around.

He gathered up three bunches of flowers, one full of whites with a purple iris for Neji, since he seemed to like white a lot. He got a bunch of pink and yellow flowers for Tenten. And a whole bunch of green leafy ones mixed with the brightest yellow, orange, and red flowers for Gai-sensei, to stoke his fires of youth.

Inoichi-san laughed when he saw the three fistfuls of flowers. He could probably read a meaning in every single flower and where he'd positioned them in the bouquet, so he was probably laughing at him, but Naruto didn't care. He chose those flowers because he thought his teammate's would like them, not because of any meaning or anything behind them. The blond still wrapped them up, and handed them over without any teasing or commentary though, so whatever. Naruto paid and rushed back out to the hospital where at least _half_ of his team were waiting.

She threw a pillow at him as soon as he stepped in.

He ducked with a squeak, peeking out at her through armfuls of flowers as she wheezed and coughed into her mask.

"Naruto! You – you – bast- bastard! Do you have – any – idea how – how worried I was?!" she wheezed, still managing to shout somehow. He quickly ditched the flowers and rushed over to adjust her bedding and help her sit up properly, the kunoichi scowling at him the whole time until he finished, at which point she dragged him down into a bone-creaking hug. "I was so worried when we couldn't find you, then the field went up in flames, I didn't know what to think," she rasped quietly.

Naruto felt his heart pang as he hugged her back, "I'm sorry Ten-chan, I went looking for the poppy stores, I didn't think to – "

"That's right. You didn't think," she agreed mercilessly, and then tightened her grip until it was _painful_. Naruto wheezed, and she squeezed tighter, grinning nastily, "Next time you vanish without a word, I'm going to strip you naked, tie your hands and legs together, and throw you into the kunoichi onsen for them to play with, got it?" she threatened.

"G-got it," he croaked, and gasped for air when she released him to settle back on her pillows with all the dignity of a queen instead of a twelve year old girl who had been trying her hardest to crush his rib-cage a moment ago.

Naruto grimaced, rubbing his chest as he adjusted his glasses. "I'll report in before I go next time. Promise."

She nodded, "See that you do."

He huffed a small smile. He was too unused to people caring about where he was and what he was doing, it was a little jarring to suddenly have someone who did, and so _much_ at that. He gathered his flowers back up and set the vase of pink ones on her bedside for her to 'ooh' over, he did the same to Neji who was either sleeping or meditating, either way he hadn't so much as twitched through his and Tenten's exchange. And then he went to Gai-sensei who looked horrible. Naruto stared down at his Sensei with a horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach and the burn of tears that just wouldn't come in his eyes.

He needed to get hold of enough rebreathers for the team. And put storage seals on their clothes so they would _always_ have it on them. Medicine too.

Naruto scowled thoughtfully as he set the vase on Gai-sensei's bedside table.

That had been an utterly disastrous first C-rank. He was going to make sure their second went better.

"Can I steal your table, and your brain, Ten-chan?" he asked tightly, even as he summoned several Kage Bunshin, all of whom went for the windows and doors.

"Uh, sure? What's up, Whiskers?" the girl asked, shifting side on her bed a little and patting the empty space beside her so he could sit appropriately at the too high-table for the chair next to the bed.

"We need to be better prepared. We need more Fuuinjutsu, dattebayo." He adjusted his glasses determinedly as the first of his clones arrived with several pens and a pad of paper filched from the nurses' station.

Tenten's grin was all teeth, "Awesome. Let's get started."

 _ **0000**_

 **Apologies, the 'aftercare' of the C-rank ended up going on a LOT longer than intended. Lee, Hinata, and the Hormone Hammer will occur later, they're written into the plot because important. There's no avoiding it, but they're just not happening right now. Instead Naruto's gotten a bug up his butt about making sure this shit doesn't happen again.**


End file.
